Van Leer Institute Press has been publishing academic books and journals in the social sciences and the humanities since the 1990s. The press is the flagship of the Institute: It serves as a window on the Institute’s work and it is the leading means of publicizing research conducted at the Institute, both for illuminative purposes and for scholarly thought and use.

Over the years VLI press has published a long list of formative books in diverse fields of the humanities and the social sciences, including sociology, history, anthropology, philosophy, political economics, political science, Jewish thought, Judaism, literature, gender, postcolonial studies, the Middle East, and public policy. The publications have a broad disciplinary range and are written in various genres. Most are the result of research conducted at the Institute by individuals or groups, or the product of lecture series at the Institute.

The publications reflect the topics with which the Institute is engaged, and they offer original thought and theoretical innovation. They reflect the Institute’s vision, which outlines two axes of thought and action: the research axis and the public-social axis. The latter derives from the former and engages with questions, problems, and deep processes in Israeli society and abroad. Therefore, in addition to the scholarly literature, the Institute’s press also publishes nonfiction works aimed at an educated audience as well as policy studies and position papers on gender, economics, and public policy. These, too, are the fruits of research conducted at the Institute. All the publications undergo a rigorous review process by outside reviewers.

Most of the books published by the Institute, in conjunction with Hakibbutz Hameuchad, are in Hebrew. Van Leer Institute Press also collaborates with the Magnes Press. Over the years the Institute has published some thirty books in English, in collaboration with academic and other leading presses in the United States and Europe.