A scholar and author focusing on international relations, and religious studies, in the West and the Arab world, Dr. H.A. Hellyer was a Nonresident Senior Fellow for the Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC and a Senior Associate Fellow in International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Dr. Hellyer was also appointed as a Senior Fellow in Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College and adjunct Professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies on Islam, Science and Civilisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His insights on current events in the Arab World, Europe, and Muslim communities worldwide are regularly sought by the international media networks such as CNN and the BBC, he has published several hundred op-eds for publications like the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Guardian, Mada Masr, the Globe and Mail, the National, and al-Jazeera. Following the 2005 London bombings, he was appointed as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce on tackling radicalization, and served as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s first Economic and Social Research Council Fellow as part of the ‘Islam’ and ‘Counter-Terrorism’ teams.
Dr. Hellyer was a Nonresident Fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in DC and Research Associate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is currently on the steering committee for a multi-year EU-funded project on “Radicalisation, Secularism and the Governance of Religion”, which brings together European, North African, and Asian perspectives with a consortium of twelve universities and think-tanks. He previously served as the first Arab world-based Senior Practice Consultant at the Gallup Organization, where he analyzed public opinion data in a variety of countries in the Arab world and the West.
An academic as well as an analyst, Dr. Hellyer has had additional scholarly attachments at noted institutions including the University of Warwick, where he was a Senior Research Fellow, and the American University in Cairo. He has authored several books and monographs and has contributed more than twenty-five book chapters and journal articles to various presses. While his main disciplinary home is International Relations, particularly with regards to the study of politics, security and sociology, Dr. Hellyer has published widely in Religious Studies, especially in terms of religion and modernity, and contemporary Islam. His main area focuses remain the West, and the Arab world.
Recent books and monographs include “Muslims of Europe: the ‘Other’ Europeans” for Edinburgh University Press, “Engagement with the Muslim Community & Counter-Terrorism: British Lessons for the West” for Brookings Institution Press and “A Revolution Undone: Egypt’s Road Beyond Revolt” for Oxford University Press and Hurst& Company. His latest book, “A Sublime Path” examines the Sufi order of the Meccan polymath, Sayyid Muhammad bin ‘Alawi al-Maliki, co-written with two of al-Maliki’s most noted students. In 2018, Dr. Hellyer also edited the volume, “The Islamic Tradition and the Human Rights Discourse”, published by the Atlantic Council.
Dr. Hellyer holds a degree in law from the University of Sheffield School of Law as well as an advanced degree in international political economy from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Politics. He completed a multidisciplinary PhD at the University of Warwick as an Economic and Social Research Council scholar, and researched Islamic thought in the UK, Egypt, Malaysia and South Africa.