Professor Hisham Hellyer

Professor H.A. Hellyer is Professorial Research Associate at the SOAS Middle East Institute. He is also Senior Associate Fellow with RUSI International at the Royal United Services Institute, where he has been a fellow since 2013, and Senior Fellow for Geopolitics and Security at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC.

Hellyer began his career in UK government counter-terrorism policy, including as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office's first ESRC Fellow, and has since advised governments across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He has held posts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution and the Atlantic Council, and academic positions at the University of Warwick, the American University in Cairo, Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Cambridge.

His current research focuses on the emergence of regional security arrangements among the GCC states in particular, and the wider Arab world and Middle East region more widely; and the changing political order across the Gulf, the Levant and Egypt. He spends much of the year within the wider Arab world region, and also works on Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia and Singapore.

Since 2007, he has also advised companies on political risk. He is a regular commentator for CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera and DW, and the author or editor of 10 books.