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Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs, and the writer and host of the Guns for Hire Podcast.
Brahimi previously held several academic positions, as research associate in international relations at the Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford; research fellow in global security at the London School of Economics of Political Science, where she also managed the North Africa programme; and visiting research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. She has also worked as a political advisor on the Middle East and North Africa and has delivered expert briefings to governments and defence agencies.
Brahimi’s regional expertise lies in the Middle East and North Africa; her thematic interest centers on morality, just war theory, and non-state fighters. She is the author of Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror (Oxford University Press) and has published widely on jihadism, Islamism, the ethics of war, and the politics of the Middle East. Brahimi’s work has appeared in a variety of academic journals and edited volumes, and with think tanks such as the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, IISS, and Carnegie.
Her commentary for a wider audience has been published by the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the Telegraph and Newsweek, and she has provided expert comment to Reuters, the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Deutsche Well and AFP, among many others. She is also a frequent commentator for major international media, including the BBC, PBS, NPR, France 24, and Al Jazeera.
Alia is an experienced speaker and has been invited to address a range of public, corporate and academic audiences, including at The Frontline Club, the UK Parliament, The V&A Museum, Windsor Castle and the Royal Bank of Scotland. She regularly speaks at international defence and security conferences, as well as moderating high-level panels, organizing and leading workshops in the region, and participating in dialogues and strategy simulations.
Brahimi first graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. She then read for a master’s (MPhil) and PhD (DPhil) in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she also supervised undergraduate and graduate students and completed her postdoctoral research.