Dr Alex Wilson

Dr Alexander Wilson is a Lecturer in Security Studies at the Department of Defence Studies at King’s College London where he provides professional military education to officers from countries on all six permanently inhabited continents. Before that, he taught history to undergraduates at the Department of War Studies and strategy to officers and diplomats at the Royal College of Defence Studies. He currently convenes the Land Warfare and Critical Analysis of Battle MA Modules.

Alex’s research focuses on two outputs: first, the military history of India during the Second World War and, second, a transnational study of the socio-political dimensions of that conflict. His research has taken him to archives in India and Nepal and to battlefields from Italy to Myanmar. He has presented on aspects of this research at conferences from China to Cameroon. He is active in a range of research networks including the Second World War Research Group where he has held the post of Regional Director for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (2019- present) and was among the first cohort to be appointed Fellow of that group (2020). He is also a Councillor of the Army Records Society (2019- present).

Alex engages on his research in the public and policy spheres. Highlights include participation in Operation REFLECT, the Army’s official study package to commemorate the centenary of the Great War (2016), the British Embassy in Morocco’s First World War centenary lecture tour (2018), the Chandigarh Military Literature Festival (2020), and the Smithsonian Channel’s WWII Battles in Colourseries (2021).

Research Interests

• The conduct of war from the 1740s to the future
• South Asian Military History
• The Second World War

PhD Supervision

Alex is happy to supervise PhD research in the following fields:

• The operational military history of the Second World War
• Socio-political dimensions of the Second World War
• South Asian military history