Daniel Marston

Daniel Marston is the SAIS Distinguished Professor of Military History and Strategy and 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 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 2021 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. His newest monograph, The Eighth Army and the Italian Campaign: The British Empire and Commonwealth at War, will be published in January 2027. 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.