Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar won the 2025 Association for Israel Studies Shapiro Award for her book Strictly Observant: Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women Negotiating Media (Rutgers University Press). Neriya-Ben Shahar also held a fellowship in 2024–2025 at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Studies, University of Pennsylvania for the project “Usage Patterns and Promoting Health Services among Ultra-Orthodox.”

 Neriya-Ben Shahar is a senior lecturer at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, Israel, where she teaches courses on research methods, communication, religion, and gender. She is also a scholar at the Israel Democracy Institute, where she studies media usage among the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. 

 Neriya Ben-Shahar investigates mass media from the perspectives of religion and gender. Her research addresses the tensions existing between religious values and new technologies among women in Old Order Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.