Peter Beilharz (born 13 November 1953 in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian sociologist. He is currently Professor of Critical Theory at Sichuan University in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, PRC. He was previously Professor of Culture and Society at Curtin University, and was for many years Professor of Sociology at 
La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Beilharz is Founding Editor of the international journal of social theory, Thesis Eleven published by Sage. From 2002–2014 he was the director of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at La Trobe University. He is best known for his work in social theory and socialism, for his intellectual biography of the Australian art historian, Bernard Smith, and his eight books on the eminent Polish sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 1999–2000 he was the Harvard Chair of Australian Studies, Harvard University. In 2015 was a Research Fellow at STIAS, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. He is a longstanding fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale, and is Visiting Professor of the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds.