D Gershon Lewental is a cultural historian of the Middle East, focusing on how societies use religion, memory, and conflict to define and maintain their identities. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle East Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and has also taught at the University of Oklahoma (since 2012) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (since 2023). Since 2015, he has served as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Persianate Studies. He earned his bachelor of arts degree (magna cum laude) from Cornell University and his doctorate in Middle Eastern history from Brandeis University. His dissertation, on the changing perceptions of the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran through time, received the Foundation of Iranian Studies Best Dissertation Award and the Brandeis University Glatzer Dissertation Prize.

His fields of specialisation include Iranian and Persianate history, early Islamic historiography, the history of the Bahaʾi community in Israel, modern Central Asian identities, and Middle East minorities.