Peter is the series editor of the Melbourne University Press Defence Studies Series  and editorial board member of Global War Studies and the Australian Army Journal. Peter was managing editor of the journal Security Challenges from 2012-2015. He is also a regular media commentator on Australian and regional defence issues.

Peter was the 2014 Fulbright Scholar in Australia-United States Alliance Studies and was Associate Dean (Education) for the ANU's College of Asia and the Pacific in 2015-16. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Australian & New Zealand Studies Centre, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Washington DC and an Adjunct Fellow in the Pacific Partners Initiative at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. In 2011 he was a Research Associate at the United States Studies Centre, Sydney University (2011).

He is the author / editor of seven books:  Australia's American Alliance (Melbourne University Press, 2016), Australia's Defence: A New Era? (Melbourne University Press, 2014), The Architect of Victory (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Australia 1942: In the Shadow of War (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Australia 1943: The Liberation of New Guinea (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Australia 1944-45: Victory in the Pacific (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and MacArthur's Coalition: U.S. and Australian military Operations in the SWPA 1942-45 (Forthcoming: University Press of Kansas, 2017).

He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and in 2011 was a recipient of a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in the Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s Australian Awards for University Teaching.