Dr. Robert Foley

Biography

Robert Foley is a Professor in the Department of Defence Studies at King's College London. His academic interests primarily focus on the development of German military thought from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. He emphasizes the strategic and operational ideas that shaped German military operations, as well as the successes and failures of the German Army during World War I. His notable publications include 'German Strategy at Verdun' (Cambridge, 2004), which won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize in 2005, and 'The German Army in World War I', published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Foley's research also examines the role of learning and innovation in wartime, analyzing historical lessons from World War I and their application to contemporary military operations involving British armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has published numerous articles in this vein, including 'Learning War’s Lessons: The German Army's Battle of the Somme, 1916', which won the Moncado Prize from the Society for Military History. Besides his teaching and research, Foley is available for PhD supervision on topics related to Military Learning, Military Innovation, and Military Strategic Thought in the context of World War I and German Military Thought from 1871 to 1945.

Research Interests