Ohad Gilbar is a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at the School of Social Work. Dr. Ohad Gilbar received his MA and PhD at the School of Social Work of Bar-Ilan University. His doctoral dissertation examined the contribution of traumatic events and related PTSD to predicting the cycle of intergenerational violence. He has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of Boston University. He is also a member of the research group in Professor Casey Taft's lab (Boston University) in the field of PTSD and intimate partner violence (IPV).
Dr. Gilbar’s interests – both in terms of research and clinical work – have focused on the contribution of traumatic event exposure, PTSD/CPTSD, and gender upon face-to-face and cyber-intimate-partner violence. Specifically, he studies the psychological mechanism of trauma response that explains IPV in social contexts. Additionally, he has been working on developing and validating measurements to assess these issues. Gilbar uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
Research spotlight
Randomized control trial of trauma-informed intervention of IPV
This is a four-year study funded by U.S-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). It commenced in October 2020, and he serves as PI jointly with Professors Casey Taft and Marc Gelkogf and Dr. Yael Caspi. This study examines, for the first time, the effectiveness of Strength at Home (SAH), a trauma-informed intervention of IPV, among civilians. In addition, the study examines the impact of social information processing biases/deficits on IPV. One of the study’s aims is to culturally validate the effectiveness of SAH in Israel, which could strengthen the understanding of the applicability of trauma-informed social information processing to reduce IPV in the wider population and across cultural contexts.