Albert Shaw (July 23, 1857 – June 25, 1947) was an American journalist and academic.

Born in Shandon, Ohio, to the family of Dr. Griffin M. Shaw, Albert Shaw moved to Iowa in the spring of 1875, where he attended Iowa College (now Grinnell College) specializing in constitutional history and economic science and graduated in 1879.

In 1883, Shaw secured a position on the Minneapolis Tribune but returned to Johns Hopkins to complete a Ph.D. His thesis, "Icaria: A Chapter in the History of Communism", was later translated and published in Germany.

Shaw married Elizabeth Leonard Bacon of Reading, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 1893.

Shaw was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in October 1893.