Institute for Policy Research & Development
Post-Doc, International Relations
University of Sussex, International Relations
Executive Director
Thesis Title: The Violence of Empire: The Logic and Dynamic of Strategies of Violence and Genocide in Historical and Contemporary Imperial Social Systems
About
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is a bestselling author and political analyst specialising in the study of mass violence in the context of international security issues. He is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London.
Dr. Ahmed has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, and lectured at Brunel University’s Politics & History Unit at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, for courses in international relations theory, contemporary history, empire and globalization.
Dr. Ahmed has an M.A. in Contemporary War & Peace Studies and a D.Phil in International Relations from the School of Global Studies at Sussex University. His doctoral thesis investigated the radicalization processes and dynamics of violent conflict, including mass violence and genocide, in the context of modern imperial social systems – particularly the European Atlantic empires and US-UK counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also published widely on international terrorism and the ‘War on Terror’, focusing on exploring the material infrastructure of Islamist terrorist networks, and the energy geopolitics of US and Western foreign policy strategies.
Dr. Ahmed's current research focuses on the radicalization of violent conflicts in strategic regions in the context of systemic ecological, economic and energy crises rooted in the structure of the global political economy, exemplified in his latest monograph, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: and How to Save It (Pluto, Macmillan, 2010). His previous books are The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, Overlook, 2006); The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Interlink, 2005); Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (Clairview, New Society, 2003) and The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 (Progressive, 2002). The latter was nominated for the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, in 2003. His writings have been translated into French, German, Italian, and Arabic.
Dr. Ahmed’s research has been used by the 9/11 Commission; the US Army Air University’s ‘Causes of War’ collection (2007); the UK Ministry of Defence’s Joint Services Command & Staff College Research Guide on Counter-Terrorism and the GWOT (2008); Chatham House’s Middle East Programme; the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) ‘World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization’ social science bibliography on impacts of globalization (2003); the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (2010), among others. He testified in US Congress about his research on Western intelligence policies toward al-Qaeda in 2005, and in 2009 advised the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on engagement with Muslim communities on behalf of the London-based conflict resolution charity Forward Thinking. He has also advised and given written evidence before the UK Parliamentary Select Committee for Communities & Local Government in its Inquiry into HM Government’s ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ (PVE) programme.
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