Tali Ziv is currently a graduate student in the Anthropology department at the University of Pennsylvania receiving certificates in urban studies and Africana studies. Prior to her time at Penn, she received by BA and MPH from the University of Michigan where she designed her own major and course of graduate study in political-economy and global health. This work was regionally focused in Latin America and the Caribbean and topically emphasized substance abuse, incarceration, and HIV/AIDS. Ziv's current research on the carceral state sits at the intersection of Anthropology, Sociology/Criminology, and Africana Studies.

Tali Ziv's current research explores the contemporary decarceration efforts in Philadelphia, examining the community-based institutional transformation that has shaped the incarceration alternative landscape. She does this through a global analysis of the historical economic and political forces that have formed both carceral and decarceral approaches to the social issues of addiction and poverty as well as an intimate analysis of individual experiences navigating these systems. In sum, her dissertation research explores the transformation of the urban management of racialized poverty from both a structural and intimate vantage point.