Rate My Professor Ben Rich

Dr. Ben Rich is a Senior Lecturer in History and International Relations within the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. He earned his PhD in International Relations from Monash University in 2016 and has been with Curtin since that year, advancing to Discipline Lead for Politics and History in 2026. As Director of the Curtin Extremism Research Network (CERN) since 2021, Rich leads efforts to study and counter political extremism, developing open-source resources for policymakers, teachers, community leaders, and young people to address extremism and disinformation.

Rich's academic interests center on political extremism, the manosphere, ontological security, identity conflicts in democracies, Saudi foreign policy, and Middle Eastern security dynamics. His influential publications include 'The Impact of Jihadist Foreign Fighters on Indigenous Secular-Nationalist Causes: Contrasting Chechnya and Syria' (Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2015), 'The Manosphere as an Online Protection Racket: How the Red Pill Monetizes Male Need for Security in Modern Society' (Fast Capitalism, 2022), 'From Defense to Offense: Realist Shifts in Saudi Foreign Policy' (Middle East Policy, 2019), 'Political extremism, conflict identities and the search for ontological security in contemporary established democracies' (Academia Letters, 2021), 'Gulf War 4.0: Iran, Saudi Arabia and the complexification of the Persian Gulf equation' (Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 2012), and the book 'Securitising Identity: the case of the Saudi State' (Melbourne University Press, 2017). Rich engages the public through expert commentary on platforms like ABC Radio, The Conversation articles, and Curtin University podcasts on topics including the manosphere, masculinity and extremism, anti-vaxxers, incels, QAnon, and political extremism. His work contributes to understanding online radicalization, identity-driven conflicts, and realist shifts in Gulf state policies.