Staff profile

Biography

Dr. Rob Geist Pinfold joined the School of Government and International Affairs in 2022. Alongside his role at Durham, he is a Research Fellow at the Peace Research Center Prague and a Senior Fellow at Charles University's Herzl Center for Israel Studies. Rob holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. Previously, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Haifa. 

Rob is a scholar of international security whose research intersects the study of strategy and territorial conflict. His existing work has focused on two key themes: (i) military occupation and exit dilemmas and (ii) how 'grand strategy' is studied within the academy. His work has been published in 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, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2023. 

• Israeli foreign and security policy
• Military interventions and occupations
• Strategy and grand strategy
• Territorial conflict

Authored book

• Pinfold, R. G. (in press). Understanding Territorial Withdrawal: Israeli Occupations and Exits. Oxford University Press

Chapter in book

• Pinfold, R. G. Security in the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Applying a Territorial Prism. In A. Siniver (Ed.), Routledge Companion to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Routledge
• Pinfold, R. G. (2018). Israel: A Nation of Contrasts and Cleavages. In J. Peters, & R. G. Pinfold (Eds.), Understanding Israel: Political, Societal and Security Challenges (1-9). Routledge

Edited book

• Peters, J., & Pinfold, R. G. (Eds.). Understanding Israel. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315647357
• Peters, J., & Geist Pinfold, R. (Eds.). (2024). Routledge Handbook on Israel's Foreign Relations. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003048398

Journal Article

• Geist Pinfold, R., & Eiran, E. (2024). Annexation Attempts as a Two-Level Game: Israel and the West Bank in 1967 and 2020. Journal of Global Security Studies, 9(2), Article ogae013. https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogae013
• Geist Pinfold, R. (2023). Security, Terrorism, and Territorial Withdrawal: Critically Reassessing the Lessons of Israel's “Unilateral Disengagement” from the Gaza Strip. International Studies Perspectives, 24(1), 67–87. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekac013
• Geist Pinfold, R., & Peters, J. (2021). The limits of Israel’s periphery doctrine: Lessons from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Mediterranean Politics, 26(1), 25-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2019.1693125
• Pinfold, R. G., & Smith, M. (2019). Theorizing Territorial Withdrawal: The Need to Think Strategically. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 45(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610x.2019.1661083
• Geist Pinfold, R. (2019). Territorial withdrawal as multilateral bargaining: Revisiting Israel’s ‘unilateral’ withdrawals from Gaza and southern Lebanon. Journal of Strategic Studies, 44(3), https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1570146
• Peters, J., & Pinfold, R. (2015). Consolidating right-wing hegemony: the Israeli election 2015. Mediterranean Politics, 20(3), https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2015.1084146