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Dr. Bob Bowker (Honorary Professorial Fellow, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University)

Dr. Bob Bowker

Honorary Professorial Fellow, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University

Bob Bowker retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2008 after a 37-year career working mostly on the Middle East. He was posted to Saudi Arabia from 1974 to 2006, and Syria from 1979 to 1981 with short term assignments as Charge d’Affaires in Beirut. He was Australian Ambassador to Jordan (1989-1992). He was Director of External Relations and Public Information, and later Senior Adviser, Policy Research of UNRWA in 1997-1998, based in Gaza and Jerusalem. He was appointed Australian ambassador to Egypt and non-resident Ambassador to Syria, Libya, Tunisia and Sudan in 2005-2008.

He was the DFAT Scholar in Residence at the ANU Centre for Middle East and Central Asian Studies in 1994 and was awarded a PhD at the ANU in 2003.

Following his retirement from DFAT, Bowker returned to the ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies where he was Adjunct Professor from 2008 to 2016, and an Honorary Visiting Fellow from 2017 to 2019. He consulted to the then Office of National Assessments from 2008 to 2010.

His academic experience includes an attachment as Deputy Director of Studies at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies, Australian Defence College, 2001-2003; and developing and teaching graduate courses at the Australian National University on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and political and social change in the Arab world.

He has written extensively on Middle East issues for the Lowy Institute, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and as a consultant for RAND. He has written articles for a number of Australian newspapers and frequently interviewed on the ABC, SBS and other media networks.

Bowker is the author of six books on Middle East issues, including the widely referenced Palestinian Refugees: Mythology, Identity and the Search for Peace. In addition to his scholarship on Palestinian refugee issues, his Australia, Menzies and Suez, a monograph discussing Australia’s approach to the 1956 Suez Crisis, was published in November 2019; and a volume co-edited with Matthew Jordan of 449 Australian government documents relating to the Suez Crisis, Australia and the Suez Crisis, 1950-1957 was published by DFAT in 2021. A professional memoir, Tomorrow There will be Apricots: An Australian Diplomat in the Arab World, was published in 2022 and shortlisted for the 2023 ACT Book of the Year.