Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford University. His research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982 and taught at Stanford from 1983 to 2019 with a hiatus as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo in 2006-08.

In 2002 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. He has written or edited twelve books, among them: A Critical Political Economy of the Modern Middle East, co-edited with Bassam Haddad and Sherene Seikaly; Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt; Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, co-edited with Frédéric Vairel; and The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt.

His articles have been published in leading scholarly journals as well as Jacobin, Carnegie Papers, The Nation, Le Monde Diplomatique, Middle East Report, Jadaliyya, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, and several blogs. He has been interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV, BBC radio, (US) National Public Radio, and many other TV and radio programs throughout the world as well by the global print media.