NEIL PARTRICK
BIOGRAPHY & CV
BIOGRAPHY & CV
Dr Neil Partrick has been a Middle East analyst for over three decades. From 1993-95, Neil was editor and researcher at the Palestinian think-tank, Panorama, where he wrote his first book: an analysis of Palestinian factionalism. Neil subsequently worked as a researcher for three MPs in the UK parliament, was a researcher for the Jordan Information Bureau in London, and provided expert testimony on UK-Saudi relations for the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the lower house of the UK Parliament.
From 1998-2002 Neil headed the Middle East and North Africa section at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the Whitehall think-tank, and was a senior editor and author at The Economist Group (EIU) from 2002-07. In 2006 he obtained a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics (LSE) with a thesis on Kuwaiti foreign policy.
From 2008, Neil taught Middle East relations, Middle East politics, and political philosophy at the American University of Sharjah, the University of Westminster and Middlesex University respectively, and wrote extensively as a freelancer on Gulf politics and security. This included three papers published by the LSE’s Kuwait Programme: Nationalism in the Gulf (2009), GCC: Integration or Cooperation? (2011), and Saudi-Jordanian Relations. (2013).
Neil was lead contributor and editor of Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict & Cooperation published by IB Tauris in 2016, updated in 2018. His latest book is entitled State Failure in the Middle East and will be published by Routledge in August or September 2025. The book examines how power and sovereignty is exercised in four Arab majority states, and how each of these states function in the context of complex and unstable political dynamics.
In Brief
Dr Neil Partrick first became interested in the Middle East when travelling to the region in 1986. He has worked for a Palestinian political faction and for the Jordanian Government, headed the Middle East programme at a Whitehall think-tank (RUSI), analysed Saudi Arabia and Iraq for the Economist Group (EIU), and been a lecturer in the UAE (AUS, Sharjah). Since 2009 Neil has been a freelance consultant. He also publishes free-to-view papers and analysis on his blog at www.neilpartrick.com. He was the lead contributor and editor of Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict & Cooperation published by IB Tauris in 2016/2018. Neil's latest book, on state failure in MENA, will be published in August/September 2025.