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

• ‘Israel and the Politics of Intelligence Failure on 7 October’, The RUSI Journal (2025), online first [with Clive Jones]
• ‘The US Facing Israel: From Restrainer to Enabler’, Survival 67:2
• ‘Collision Course: How Iran and Israel Brought the Middle East to the Brink of War’, Global Policy (2025), online first [with Clive Jones and Anoush Ehteshami]
• ‘Myth Busting in a Post-Assad Syria’, Middle East Policy 32:3 (2025).
• ‘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)

Recent Media and Policy Articles

• July 2025, ‘Israel is sowing chaos to secure displacement in Gaza’, Foreign Policy
• July 2025, ‘Despite Netanyahu’s claims, Iran war pushed the Saudis away from normalization’, Haaretz
• June 2025, ‘How Israel’s dangerous new grand strategy has set the Middle East on fire’, The Middle East Council on Global Affairs
• June 2025, ‘Iran and Israel have a common goal in Syria’, The National
• June 2025, ‘Cold peace or hot mess? Israel, Syria and the risk of normalization’, Haaretz
• June 2025, ‘Syria’s foreign fighter dilemma’, Foreign Policy
• May 2025, ‘The strategic illogic of Israel’s actions in Syria’, The New Arab
• March 2025, ‘The March Massacres Show that Syria Urgently Needs Solutions, Not Sanctions’, War on the Rocks
• January 2025, ‘The Coming Fight for Syria’, RUSI Commentary
• February 2024, ‘Hamas is Returning to Northern Gaza Because Israel has no Plan for “the Day After”’, War on the Rocks
• January 2024, ‘Gaza: The False Allure of the Gallant Plan’, RUSI Commentary
• December 2023, ‘Israel’s Ground Invasion and the Return of Strategic Depth’, War on the Rocks

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