About Dr H.A. Hellyer

A scholar and author in Politics, International Studies, and Islamic Studies, particularly in the West and the Arab world, Dr H.A. Hellyer is a senior associate fellow and scholar at the Royal United Services Institute in London and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC.  Dr Hellyer was also appointed Senior Fellow at Cambridge Muslim College, adjunct full Professor at the University of Technology’s Centre for Advanced Studies on Islam, Science and Civilisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Senior Scholar at the Zawiya Institute in Cape Town, South Africa. Dr Hellyer 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 12 universities and think-tanks.

Following the 2005 London bombings, he was appointed as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce on tackling radicalisation, and served as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s first Economic and Social Research Council Fellow as part of the ‘Islam’ & ‘Counter-Terrorism’ teams, as an independent subject matter expert. As a non-partisan expert, Dr Hellyer has advised various governments in the West and the Arab world, particularly in his native UK. Previously a Fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in DC, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Research Associate at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University, Dr Hellyer’s analysis in the international relations of and with the Arab world, and security issues within Europe have been published in CNN, the BBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian and other outlets internationally.

Dr Hellyer has held academic attachments at noted institutions including the University of Warwick, where he was a Senior Research Fellow, and the American University in Cairo, as a professor of law. He has authored several books and monographs & has contributed more than 25 book chapters and journal articles to various presses. While his main academic home is politics and international studies, Dr Hellyer has published widely in Islamic studies, especially in terms of religion & modernity, and contemporary Islam. His main area focuses remain the West, and the Arab world, and as the first Arab world-based Senior Practice Consultant at the Gallup Organisation, he analysed public opinion data in a variety of countries in the Arab world and the West.

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’s degree in law was read at the University of Sheffield School of Law, with an advanced degree in international political economy at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Politics. Following those degrees, he completed a multidisciplinary PhD at the University of Warwick at 25, as an Economic and Social Research Council scholar, and then continued to research Islamic thought in the UK, Egypt, Malaysia and South Africa. A Briton of mixed English and Arab heritages, Dr Hellyer is included in the scholarly section of the ‘500 Most Influential Muslims in the World’ list founded by Georgetown University and the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre.