Robert Vitalis is a Professor for the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. His graduate work included three years in Cairo, Egypt where he studied Arabic and conducted research on the political strategies of Egyptian business firms. His first book, When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt, was published in 1995.

Dr Vitalis has obtained fellowships from a number of institutions, including the Woodrow Wilson International Center (2009) and the Rockefeller Foundation (2003). In 2015, he also published a book on the White World Order, Black Power Politics: the Birth of American International Relations (Cornell University Press).