Member Details

Robert Mason is an Associate Professor at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy (AGDA) and a Non-Resident Fellow with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He teaches courses on Global Order, Security and Development and Research Methods. Previously, he was Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Gulf Research Center and Director of the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo.

His research expertise includes the international relations of the Middle East, with a focus on the Gulf states.

He is the author or editor of 10 books, including most recently Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates: Foreign Policy and Strategic Alliances in an Uncertain World (Manchester University Press, 2023). His articles have appeared in Global Policy, Third World Quarterly, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, Digest of Middle East Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Arabian Studies, European Foreign Affairs Review and ORIENT, among others.

Robert has held visiting research fellowships at the University of Oxford, London School of Economics, the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and United Nations University. He was formerly elected to the executive board of the International Studies Association (ISA) Foreign Policy Analysis Section (2020-2022), was a co-convenor of the British International Studies Association (BISA) Foreign Policy Working Group (2022-2023) and was part of the committee overseeing the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Fund for Higher Education in Gaza (2024-2025).

Dr Mason holds a PhD Middle East Politics from the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.