Avi Shlaim is a Fellow of St Antony’s College and a Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. In 2003-6 he held a British Academy 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.

Avi Shlaim is based at the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College and his main research interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict. 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); and Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace (2007). He is co-editor of The Cold War and the Middle East (1997) and The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2001, 2nd ed. 2007). 

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