David Rubens

David Rubens is a recognised authority on the strategic management of complex events, particularly within a multi-agency crisis management framework. He offers a combination of doctoral-level academic research and teaching, strong commercial, operational and project management experience, and government-level and C-suite consultancy across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and East and West Africa.

He holds a doctorate in security and risk management from the University of Portsmouth, writing his thesis on alternative command and control frameworks for strategic management and critical decision-making in complex crisis environments. He is currently a Lecturer on the International Security Masters programme at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire Business School, having previously been a Visiting Lecturer and Dissertation Supervisor on the University of Leicester Security, Policing and Terrorism MSc programme, and a Visiting Lecturer on the Strategic Leadership programme at Cranfield University, where he lectured on terrorism and public policy, and strategic management of complex operations. From 2022 to 2023 he was a Professor in the United Nations University for Peace European Centre for Peace and Development (Belgrade), where he headed the Strategic Risk and Crisis Management programme.

He specialises in the management of hypercomplex systems associated with city management and critical national infrastructures. He is a member of the UK National Preparedness Commission, and was a founding member of the London Resilience Gold Command Crisis Management Project Academic Advisory Group.

In 2019 he launched the Institute of Strategic Risk Management, designed to create a space where academics, practitioners and policymakers could come together to discuss the critical issues facing us on a planetary, national and community level. The Institute now has thirty-five international chapters, works with some of the largest organisations in the world, and is recognised as an institute of significance and influence.

In 2023 the Institute launched the Centre for the Study of Wicked Problems, a global think tank with thirty-plus participating partner institutes. Its launch programme is an 18-month research and policy-development project on Global Urban Resilience.