Maheshwar P. Joshi is a historian and archaeologist with a Ph.D on temple architecture and iconography and a D.Litt. in numismatics. He is a retired Professor and former Head of the Department of History, Kumaun University, Nainital, Uttarakhand, India, and former member of the Central Advisory Board of Archaeology, Government of India. Joshi is actively engaged in research on the Central Himalaya since 1963, and has published extensively on Central Himalayan history, culture and archaeology from prehistory to the modern times. He has authored six books and jointly edited twelve books, including the Himalaya: Past and Present series of the Association of Studies on the Himalaya (with Dr. Allen C. Fanger and Dr. Charles W. Brown).

Joshi is working on the source materials for a study of socio-economic history, culture, traditional water management, and eco-sociality of Central Himalaya (Uttarakhand-Far West Nepal). Joshi's research includes study of material culture bearing on the origin of languages in the Himalaya, and language and human dispersal through the Himalayan route. Joshi's epigraphic research unfolds that Hindi and Nepali (the national languages of India and Nepal) originated from the language of the Pahari inscriptions found in Uttarakhand and Far West Nepal.

Joshi's current engagements include relevance of Indic perspective on development vis-à-vis effect of climate change in the Himalaya. In these issues Joshi is collaborating with Nepali, Polish, French, German, and American scholars.