Yael Gaulan is a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department. Under the supervision of Dr. Michal Marmorstein and Prof. Zohar Kampf from the Department of Communication and Journalism she studies the concept of shame and the emotions linked to it in personal and public discourse. She also works in the field of Hebrew language pedagogy in various political contexts. 

Her M.A. thesis, under Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal's supervision, dealt with semantic and syntactic phenomena regarding causative psych-verbs in Hebrew. 

Awards and prizes include the Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies excellence prize (2012, 2014) and the Kutscher prize for excellent academic achievements, the Department of Hebrew Language (2013).