Dr. Sharon Shahaf is an Israeli-American media scholar, educator, and research entrepreneur, and Affiliate Faculty in the Doctoral Program in Antisemitism Studies at Gratz College. Her work focuses on global media and the rise of antisemitism, with particular attention to the role of mediated environments and the implications of rising antisemitism for Israeli creative industries. Building on her expertise in qualitative research methods and critical media studies, Dr. Shahaf developed and teaches Qualitative Approaches to Antisemitism, Media Analysis in Antisemitism Studies, and Publishing in Antisemitism Studies, among the first courses designed specifically to train doctoral students in qualitative and media-analytic approaches within the emerging field of Antisemitism Studies.
Dr. Shahaf earned her Ph.D. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin and holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a B.A. in Communication and Comparative Literature from Tel Aviv University. From 2009 to 2018, she served as Assistant Professor of Global Television Studies at Georgia State University and later as a Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin. She has received multiple fellowships and awards for her research, including the Zvulun Hammer Memorial Award from Israel’s Second Authority for Radio and Television for her dissertation research on Israeli adaptations of global television formats.
Her published scholarship focuses on media globalization, Israeli creative industries, and transnational media cultures. She is the co-editor of Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders (Routledge, 2012), recipient of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Best Edited Collection Award. Her work has appeared in journals including Critical Studies in Television, Creative Industries Journal, and Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture.
Her current research explores the role of media and popular culture in understanding antisemitism after October 7, with particular attention to anti-Israeli Antisemitism, digital hate, the intersection of mediated and real-life environments such as university campuses and the Eurovision stage, and the experiences of Israeli cultural workers operating within transnational media environments. Her ongoing ethnographic research on Israel’s Eurovision delegation examines how antisemitism operates within international cultural spaces and, a peer review article is in process and expected to go into peer review with Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism next fall. Dr. Shahaf is currently developing a special issue of the Journal of Jewish Film and New Media devoted to antisemitism and media analysis, alongside a solo-authored textbook and a collaboratively edited collection on research methods in Antisemitism Studies emerging from her curriculum work at Gratz College.
Dr. Shahaf is a recipient of the 2026 ISGAP Faculty Fellowship Training Program: Combatting Holocaust Distortion and Global Antisemitism.