Department of War Studies

The Department of War Studies is rated third for teaching excellence after Oxford and Cambridge in the 2011 Guardian University Guide  for Politics and third for the volume of world-leading and internationally excellent research after Oxford and the LSE in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
 
The Department is focused on promoting our understanding of warfare in all its myriad forms, including, conventional wars, wars of national liberation, civil wars, counter insurgency wars, new wars, and the so-called "war on global terror”.
 
The War Studies Group -comprising the departments of War Studies and Defence Studies-contributes to public life, participates in national and international networks, maintaining its international reputation for excellence in scholarship and policy-relevant research.

Ending Wars: Consolidating Peace by Mats Berdal and Achim Wennmann was published on 1 September by Routledge. The authors seek to inform a more economically integrated and responsive approach to helping countries leave behind their troubled pasts and take a fuller role in constructing their futures. Read more

Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War, 1931-1941 by Joe Maiolo is published in the US on 28 September. Dr Maiolo shows how the interwar arms race shaped the outcome of World War II before the shooting even began. Read more

Nature Magazine published an online interview on 27th August 2010 with Professor Mike Rainsborough, director of the newly established
Marjan Centre for the Study of Conflict & Conservation. Read the article at http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100827/full/news.2010.438.html

^{Photo: Andrew Holt Photography}
Major General Peter Davies, CB, former director-general of the RSPCA, has taken up a new appointment within the Department of War Studies to lead a ground-breaking initiative. Major General Davies is now chairman of the management committee of the newly formed Marjan Centre for the Study of Conflict and Conservation (MCSCC). MCSCC will research and alleviate the effects of war and conflict on wildlife, animal welfare, and biodiversity. Read more. Read more on the College news pages.

MA in Terrorism, Security & Society student Kevin Ivison’s first book 'Red One - A Bomb Disposal Expert on the Front Line', is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on the 19 August. Red One is a memoir of his time as a counter-terrorist bomb disposal operator in Iraq. Read more

Professor Dandeker and Dr Patalano attended a Defence talk on 27 and 28 of July in Taipei, organised by the Ministry of National Defense. The main themes of the Defence Talk were: Issues of Military Operations, the Asia Pacific Security Outlook, Military Confidence Building Measure and Force Structure and Organisation Adjustment.
 

'Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century -- The Battle, The Myth, The Legacy', has been selected for the 2009 Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. Book Prize by the US Branch of the Western Front Association. Dr Philpott's book was judged to be the best work of history on World War I in English.
Dr William Philpott also received a 2010 Supervisory Excellence Award for his outstanding supervision and support to research students at King’s.
 

Professor Brian Holden Reid was presented with the Moncado Award by the President of the Society for Military History at an Awards Luncheon in Lexington, VA.  The award recognised  his outstanding article, 'Michael Howard and the Evolution of Modern'  published in the 73rd volume of The Journal of Military History.

Veterans Aid CEO Dr Hugh Milroy has become a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies. With effect from 1 July 2010 he will become the only head of a military charity to hold such a position. Dr Milroy will work closely with the King’s Centre for Military Health Research. Read the full press release attached.