Post: Professor of International Relations, Alistair Buchan Reader and Professorial Fellow, St Antony’s College

Appointed: 1987

College: St Antonys College

Contact electronically

Website: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/

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Introduction:

Avi Shlaim is a Fellow of St Antony's College and a Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was the Alastair Buchan Reader in International Relations from 1987 to 1996. He was the Director of Graduate Studies in International Relations in 1993-1995 and 1998-2001. In 1995-97 he held a British Academy Research Readership and in 2003-6 a Research Professorship. In 2006 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.

He was born in Baghdad in 1945 and grew up in Israel. He read History at Jesus College, Cambridge, 1966-1969 and did an M.Sc. (Econ.) in International Relations at the London School of Economics, 1969-70. He was a Lecturer then Reader in Politics at the University of Reading, 1970-87.

Research Activities and Interests:

Avi Shlaim is based at the Middle East Centre at St Antony's College and his main research interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Research News

• Mar 2009, Professor Avi Shlaim appointed Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne, Read more

Media Expertise:

Professor Shlaim is a frequent contributor to the newspapers and commentator on radio and television on Middle Eastern affairs.

Publications:

He is author of:

• British Foreign Secretaries since 1945 (joint author, 1977)
• The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948-49: A Study in Crisis-Decision Making (1983)
• Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988)
• The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998)
• War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995)
• The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000).
• Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace, Penguin Books, forthcoming: July 2007

He is co-editor of:

• The Cold War and the Middle East (1997)
• The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2001).

Articles and Chapters:

• ‘Israel and the Arab Coalition in 1948’ in Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 79-103
• ‘Israel between East and West, 1948-1956’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 36, November 2004, 657-673 
• Edward Said and the Palestine Question'. Chapter for an edited volume on the work of Edward Said, University of California Press, forthcoming; Chapter for Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom, eds., Emancipation and Representation: On the Intellectual Meditations of Edward Said (University of California Press, 2007).
• ‘The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process’ in Louise Fawcett ed.,  International Relations of the Middle East, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, 241-61