Sa'ed Atshan is an associate professor of peace and conflict studies and anthropology at Swarthmore College. He previously served as an associate professor of anthropology at Emory University, as a visiting assistant professor of anthropology and senior research scholar in Middle Eastern etudies at the University of California, Berkeley, and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Atshan earned a joint Ph.D. in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies (2013) and MA in social anthropology (2010) from Harvard University, a Master in Public Policy (MPP) (2008) from the Harvard Kennedy School, and BA (2006) from Swarthmore College. 

 Atshan is the author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020). He is also the coauthor with Katharina Galor (Judaic Studies, Brown University), of The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2020) with a German translation entitled Israelis, Palästinenser und Deutsche in Berlin: Geschichten einer komplexen Beziehung (De Gruyter, 2021). Atshan and Galor also coedited the volume, Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2022). 

Atshan’s community-based volunteer work is primarily with Quaker civil society organizations (also known as the Religious Society of Friends). He has served as an advisor to Quaker institutions including the Ramallah Friends School, on the multicultural board of Westtown School, on the Corporation of Haverford College, as a spiritual nurturer for the Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS), and on the Board of Pendle Hill. He is currently a board member for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) where he served as Clerk of the Standing Nominating Committee and is presently Clerk of AFSC's Community, Equity, and Justice Board Committee.