Yuri Pines

Yuri Pines was born in 1964 in Kyiv

Yuri Pines was born in Kyiv on June 22, 1964, to a family of physicians. His family immigrated to Israel in 1979 and settled in Jerusalem. In 1981 he joined the Rakah party and became active in it.

He served in the army as a tank gunner. He was jailed in military prison for refusing to serve in the territories and in Lebanon, in 1983 to 1984 and again in 1989 to 1990.

He earned all his degrees in East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University, with a BA in 1989, an MA in 1994 and a PhD in 1998. His doctorate dealt with Chinese thought of the 8th to 5th centuries BCE, and he also studied at UCLA and at Nankai University in Tianjin.

He became a lecturer at the Hebrew University in 1998 and a full professor in 2012, and he holds the Michael W. Lipson chair of Chinese Studies. His research covers early Chinese political thought and traditional political culture. With Gideon Shelach he writes a 3-volume Open University series on imperial China, edited by Yitzhak Shichor.