Joshua Shanes is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston. His research focuses on Central and East European Jewry in the 19th and 20th centuries, specifically turn-of-the-century Galicia and the rise of Zionism as a counter-movement to the traditional Jewish establishment. A native of Chicago, Dr. Shanes has been widely published on Jewish cultural and political history.

In 2012, he published his book, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia, about which Alison Frank of Harvard University said, "The field has been in desperate need of this study."