Rob joined the Defence Studies Department and the School of Security Studies in 2025. Previously, he was a Lecturer in Peace and Security at Durham University and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa. Rob was awarded his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London in 2018.

In addition to his role at King’s, Rob is also a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Center Prague and the Herzl Center for Israel Studies, both based at Charles University in Prague, and an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Rob’s work has been published in numerous academic journals, such as the Journal of Global Security Studies, International Studies Perspectives, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Mediterranean Politics. His full-length book manuscript, Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023 and won the European Association of Israel Studies Academic Achievement Award in 2024.

Alongside his academic outputs, he has written policy briefings for War on the Rocks and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and has provided regular commentary for France 24, RTE News, the BBC, and many others. He is also a regular analyst for Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Syrian Civil War.

Research Interests

Rob is a scholar of international security. His work engages with three key themes:

• Military occupation and exit dilemmas
• Territorial disputes and conflicts
• Grand strategy

Regionally, he focuses on war and conflict in the contemporary Middle East, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel’s foreign and security policies, and the Syrian Civil War.

Publications

Books

• Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023)
• The Routledge Handbook on Israel’s Foreign Relations (Oxon: Routledge, 2024) [co-edited with Joel Peters]
• Understanding Israel: Political, Security and Societal Challenges (Oxon, Routledge, 2018) [co-edited with Joel Peters]

Research Articles

• ‘Annexation Attempts as a Two-Level Game: Israel and the West Bank in 1967 and 2020’, The Journal of Global Security Studies, 9:2 (2024) [with Ehud Eiran]
• ‘Security, Terrorism and Territorial Withdrawal: Critically Reassessing the Lessons of Israel’s “Unilateral Disengagement” from the Gaza Strip’, International Studies Perspectives 24:1 (2022).
• ‘Theorizing Territorial Withdrawal: The Need to Think Strategically’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 45:4 (2022) [with M. L. R. Smith]
• ‘The Limits of Israel’s Periphery Doctrine: Lessons from the Caucasus and Central Asia’, Mediterranean Politics 26:1 (2021) [with Joel Peters]
• ‘Territorial Withdrawal as Multilateral Bargaining: Revisiting Israel’s “Unilateral Withdrawals” from Gaza and Southern Lebanon’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 44:3 (2021)
• Consolidating Right Wing Hegemony: The Israeli General Election of 2015’, Mediterranean Politics 20:3 (2015) [with Joel Peters]

Book Chapters

• ‘Israel, the Caucasus and Central Asia’, in Joel Peters and Rob Geist Pinfold (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Israel’s Foreign Relations (Oxford: Routledge, 2024)
• ‘Warfare in the Middle East’, in Michael Charney and Kaushik Roy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Global History of Warfare (Oxford: Routledge, 2024)
• ‘Security in the Israel-Palestine Conflict’, in Asaf Siniver (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Israeli-Palestine Conflict (Oxford: Routledge, 2023)
• ‘Israel: A Nation of Contrasts and Cleavages’ in Joel Peters and Rob Geist Pinfold (Eds.), Understanding Israel: Political, Security and Societal Challenges (Oxford: Routledge, 2018)

Policy Papers

• January 2025, ‘The Coming Fight for Syria’, RUSI Commentary
• January 2024, ‘Gaza: The False Allure of the Gallant Plan’, RUSI Commentary
• February 2024, ‘Hamas is Returning to Northern Gaza Because Israel has no Plan for “the Day After”’, War on the Rocks
• December 2023, ‘Israel’s Ground Invasion and the Return of Strategic Depth’, War on the Rocks

Media Articles

• November 2023, ‘What Gaza might look like the day after the war’, The Conversation
• December 2023, ‘The Gospel: Israel’s controversial AI used in the Gaza war’, The New Arab
• October 2023, ‘Gaza Conflict: The US Learned from its Forever Wars, Israel did not’, The Conversation
• March 2015 – ‘We Asked a Military Expert What Would Happen if the US Stopped Giving Money to Israel’, Vice Magazine
• November 2014, ‘Why Has Violence Surged in Jerusalem?’, The Daily Telegraph

Teaching

Rob would be happy to supervise PhDs in the following areas:

• Israel’s conflicts with its neighbours
• The Syrian Civil War
• Territorial disputes and conflicts
• Occupation and exit dilemmas
• Grand strategy

Research Centres and Groups

• Centre for Grand Strategy
• Institute of Middle Eastern Studies