Eitan Oren

Dr. Eitan Oren is a Senior Lecturer in the War Studies Department at King’s College London. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Tokyo, with prior degrees in Security Studies and Jewish History from Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on the intersection of international security and political psychology, examining how different individuals and groups perceive various security threats.

Born and raised in Israel, Eitan has dedicated his academic work to East-Asian security, a conscious departure from the study of Middle Eastern politics. In a series of articles and a monograph, he examined how leaders, defence personnel, mainstream media and the general public in Japan and across East-Asia perceived different security threats during and after the Cold War. More recently, this empirical focus has been expanded to investigate how leaders around the world, embedded in different cultural and historical contexts, understand and experience security threats.

The events of October 7th, together with the experience of being a Jewish Israeli academic living in London since then, have reoriented his focus toward Jewish threat perceptions. Dr. Oren is currently working on two interrelated projects concerning antisemitism. The first project uses insights from psychology and neuroscience to investigate Jewish threat perceptions, exploring the nature and mental origins of these fears. The second project applies strategic foresight methods to construct and evaluate potential future scenarios for antisemitism, with the aim of identifying pathways toward a more positive future.