Omar Ashour is a Professor of Security and Military Studies and the Founding Chair of the Critical Security Studies Programme at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is the Director of the Strategic Studies Unit at the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies. He was a tenured faculty member at the University of Exeter (UK) for ten years (2008-2018) and lectured at McGill University (Canada) for two years (2006-2008). He previously served as a senior consultant for the United Nations on counterterrorism, security sector reform, and de-radicalization issues. Professor Ashour was a reserve officer in the British army and holds a doctoral degree from McGill University in Canada. He specialises in small state defence; combat and military effectiveness; military adaptations, innovations, and transformations by state and nonstate armed actors; asymmetric, conventional, irregular and hybrid warfare; weapon systems analysis; counterinsurgency and counterterrorism; and collective de-radicalization.
He is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (Routledge, 2009) and How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and the editor of Bullets to Ballots: Collective De-Radicalisation of Armed Movements (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). His current research project is focused on “Combat Effectiveness for Smaller States : The Case of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.”
