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Daniel Marston

Daniel Marston

Professor of Practice

Director of the Strategic Thinkers Program

About

Daniel Marston is the Director of the Secretary of Defense Strategic Thinkers Program (STP) at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University. Between 2012-2018, he held a Professorship (Tenured) in the History of War at the Australian National University and was also the Principal of the Military and Defense Studies Program at the Australian Command & Staff College in Canberra. He previously held the Ike Skelton Distinguished Chair in the Art of War at the US Army Command and General Staff College. He has been a Visiting Fellow, on multiple occasions, with the Leverhulme Changing Character of War Program at the University of Oxford. He was previously a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
 
Marston's research focuses on the topic of transnational military culture; reciprocity of war and society; and how armies learn and adapt to new environments. His book Phoenix from the Ashes, an in-depth assessment of how the British/Indian Army turned defeat into victory in the Burma campaign of the Second World War, won the Field Marshal Templer Medal Book Prize for 2003. The second volume, The Indian Army and the End of the Raj, was Runners Up for the Templer Medal in 2014. His latest monograph, 1945 Burma Campaign and the Transformation of the British Indian Army, with Professor Raymond Callahan, won the Field Marshal Templer Medal Book Prize for 2021. He completed his doctorate as the Beit Research Scholar in Imperial and Commonwealth History at Balliol College, Oxford University. He received a BA and MA from McGill University and a PhD from Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Future Publications:
  • Mansoor, P. R., Murray, W., & Marston, D. et al. (2019). The culture of military organizations. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
  • Marston, D. & Callahan, R. (2020). Payback: Burma 1945. Modern War Studies Series, University Press of Kansas.
Publications:

Expertise

Topics

  • History of War
  • British Imperial History 1700-1960
  • British military history
  • South Asian military history
  • Wars of British Decolonization
  • US military history
  • Strategic Studies

In the News

Institutional operating codes: The culture of military organizations.

Daniel Marston cited in RealClearDefense, 1/28