Itamar Even-Zohar (Hebrew: איתמר אבן-זהר; born 1939) is an Israeli culture researcher and professor at Tel Aviv University.

He has been a guest scholar at universities and research centers in Amsterdam, Paris, Philadelphia, Reykjavík, Quebec City, Louvain, Santiago de Compostela, Santander, St. John's (Newfoundland), Barcelona and Santa Cruz, California.

He has a working knowledge of Hebrew (mother tongue), Arabic, English, French, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Italian, Russian, German, Icelandic, and other languages.

Since the early 1970s Even-Zohar has been working on developing theoretical tools and research methodology for dealing with the complexity and interdependency of socio-cultural ‘systems,’ which he views as heterogeneous, versatile and dynamic networks.

In order for these notions to be widely and fruitfully applicable to all living, complex cultural activities, he believes one must take into account the interplay of the diachronic (historical) and synchronic (contemporary) dimensions of a socio-cultural system".

It allowed researchers to break away from the normative notion of “literature” and “culture” as limited sets of highbrow products and explore a multi-layered interplay between “center” and “periphery”, and “canonized” and “non-canonized.” Even-Zohar has also studied linguistic diglossia and the interrelationship of literary systems.

His "polysystem theory" (Even-Zohar 1978, 1979, 1990, 1997, 2005 [electronic book]) analyzed sets of relations in literature and language, but gradually shifted towards a more complex analysis of socio-cultural systems.

Even-Zohar's systemic approach has transformed Translation studies from a marginal philological specialty to a focus of inter-culture research.

Since the end of the 18th century a growing number of communities around the globe have adopted the model of self-management, often bundled together with enterprises to create separate culture repertoires.