Omar Ashour

Professor of Security and Military Studies and the Founding Chair of the Critical Security Studies Programme in the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (Routledge, 2009) and How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), as well as the editor of Bullets to Ballots: Collective De-Radicalisation of Armed Movements (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). He served at the University of Exeter (UK) as a tenured faculty member for ten years (2008-2018). He also served as a senior consultant for the United Nations on security sector reform, counterterrorism, and de-radicalization issues (2009-2013; 2015). He co-authored the United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for West Asia's (UN-ESCWA) document on security sector reform during the transitional periods of the "Arab Spring." He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution (2010-2015) and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London (2015-2017). He has a Ph.D. degree from McGill University in Canada.