Joan G. Roland is chair and professor of history at Pace University in New York City. She received her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from Columbia University. She began her study of the Jews of India while on a Fulbright Fellowship to India in 1977–1978 and published Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Era (University Press of New England: 1989), a second edition of which was updated and published by Transaction Publishers (1998), under the title of The Jewish Communities of India. She is currently working on the integration and adaptation of Indian Jews in Israel, particularly on the preservation and transformation of Bene Israel culture, and has published articles on this topic.