Robert O’Neill is currently the Planning Director of the United States Studies Centre of the University of Sydney. His research focuses on current and past war and warfare and ways of resolving international tensions. Until 2005, O’Neill was the Chair of the Council of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra. He was Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney, from 2003-05. He was also named as a member of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons established by the Australian Government in 1995-96.
O’Neill spent several years in England and retired from Oxford University in 2001, where he had been the Chilchele Professor of History and War and a Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford since 1987. From 1991-2001, O’Neill held the position of Co-Director of the All Souls Foreign Policy Studies Programme. During his time at Oxford, O’Neill held several Chairmanships including: Chairman of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 1996-2001; Chairman of Trustees of the Imperial War Museum 1998-2001, and a director of the International Peace Academy, New York, 1990-2001. He has been a Director of the Lowy Institute since 2005.
From 1970 to 2001 he was the Armed Services Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography. He served from 1982-87 as Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. Prior to his appointment to Oxford in 1987, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1978.
O’Neill initially taught military history at the Royal Military College of Australia and then moved to the Australian National University where he served as Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre from 1982-71.
O’Neill’s diverse works include The German Army and the Nazi Party, Vietnam Task, and General Giap: Politician and Strategist. Between 1970 and 1982 he wrote the Official History of Australia’s role in the Korean War.
O’Neill served in the Australian Regular Army from 1955-68, including war service in Vietnam. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1988. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford from 1961-65, where he received a Doctorate of Philosophy in Modern History.
