Robert Trager

Robert F. Trager is co-director of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, international governance lead at the Centre for the Governance of AI, and senior research fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on how states form beliefs about the intentions of other states, and in particular on the role of diplomacy. He also works on the determinants of coercive success and international terrorism, and has published in International Security, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and The Political Methodologist. He is currently at work on a book entitled Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy. Before moving to the University of Oxford, Dr. Trager was professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and held a faculty position at Yale University and an Olin Fellowship at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.Sc from the London School of Economics.

Before beginning his Ph.D. at Columbia University, he worked in the Investment Banking Division of Lehman Brothers in New York. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Eisenhower Institute, the Public Policy Consortium, the Columbia University Center for Conflict Resolution, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy.