Haggai Olshanetsky is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Ancient History of the University of Warsaw.
He obtained all of his degrees from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, including a BA in Criminology and General History, an MPhil in General History, MA in Archaeology and a PhD in Classical Studies. His doctoral thesis dealt with Jewish military service in the Hellenistic and Roman armies. This PhD dissertation offers the most extensive corpus of evidence for Jewish military service, while challenging academic and general perception on this phenomenon, as well as confronting misconceptions on ancient Jewish society and Jewish attitudes and their relationships to foreign rulers.
His research interests are diverse, and range from ancient Judaism, military history, environmental history, economics and the integration of minorities in antiquity. As part of the project, he is exploring several topics, including Jewish enlistment in the Persian Army, the reasons for creating the Septuagint (the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek), and examining several aspects of the book of Judith.