Peter Mandaville is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center.

Mandaville is a professor of international affairs in the Schar School of Policy and Government and director of the Abu Sulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University. From 2024 to 2025, he served as the director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and senior advisor for faith engagement at the United States Agency for International Development. From 2022 to 2024, he was senior advisor for religion and inclusive societies at the United States Institute of Peace. His prior government experience includes serving as a member of the US State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (2010-2012) and as a senior advisor in the US secretary of state’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2015-2016). He has previously held affiliations at the Brookings Institution, Pew Research Center, the RAND Corporation, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mandaville is the author of Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma and the third edition of Islam & Politics. He is also the editor of The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power and Wahhabism and the World. Mandaville’s writing has also been published in the International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and Foreign Policy. He has testified multiple times before the US Congress on topics including political Islam and human rights in the Middle East. His research has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Henry Luce Foundation.