Dr. Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow within 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 policy areas related to the Middle East and North Africa and has delivered expert briefings to western governments.

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, ideology and the politics of region, with a focus on Libya. 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 and the Guardian, among many others. She also appears regularly in the broadcast media.

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.