Deputy Director (Defence), RAND Europe

Benedict (Ben) Wilkinson is deputy director (defence) and co-director of the Centre for Defence Economics and Acquisition at RAND Europe.

Wilkinson has more than a decade of experience leading research projects on a wide range of defence and security challenges for a host of clients including the UK Ministry of Defence (Dstl, DCDC SONAC, DST), the UK Home Office, the UK Commission on Countering Extremism as well as the European Parliament, NATO and the Australian Department of Defense.

His areas of research interest are wide-ranging but include UK defence and security policy; defence acquisition and industry (with a particular interest in defence economics); wider geopolitics and national strategy; counter-terrorism and counter-extremism.

His research has been featured in national and international media including the BBC, the Times, the Independent, RTE and Channel Four. He has published more than 50 journal articles, reports and policy papers, and has written two books. His most recent, on terrorism as a failed strategy, was published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in 2020.

Previously, he was director of research in the Policy Institute at King’s College London. He has held posts as head of Security and Counter-Terrorism at RUSI and as a senior directing staff at the Royal College of Defence Studies. He completed his Ph.D in the Department of War Studies at KCL under the supervision of Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman.