Dr Deane-Peter Baker was appointed to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra (at the Australian Defence Force Academy) in August 2012, where he is also a researcher in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society.

He came to Canberra from Annapolis, Maryland, USA, where he was an Assistant Professor of Ethics in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy for two and a half years. Prior to that Dr Baker was Associate Professor of Ethics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, where he taught for eleven years. His PhD, in philosophy, was awarded by Macquarie University. Dr Baker served briefly in the British Army, and served the South African Army Reserve where he was Convenor of the South African Army Strategy Research Group and part of the leadership team of the Umvoti Mounted Rifles, a reserve armoured cavalry regiment.

A specialist in both the ethics of armed conflict and military strategy, Dr Baker's research straddles philosophy, ethics and security studies. From 2006 to 2008 Dr Baker was Chairman of the Ethics Society of South Africa. He has held visiting fellowships at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies in North Carolina, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College and Kings College London. From 2007 to 2010 Dr Baker was editor of the African Security Review. Dr Baker created the world’s first Massive Open Online Course on the topic of Military Ethics, hosted on the FutureLearn platform. In 2017 he was appointed to the International Panel for the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons.