Dr. Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. She previously held several academic positions, as research associate in international relations at the Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford; research fellow in global security at the London School of Economics of Political Science, where she also managed the North Africa programme; and visiting research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. She has also worked as a political advisor on policy areas related to the Middle East and North Africa, and has provided expert briefings to several governments.

Brahimi’s regional expertise lies in the Middle East and North Africa; her thematic interest centers on issues of morality, narratives and conflict. She is the author of Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror (Oxford University Press) and has published widely on jihadism, Islamism, just war theory, ideology and the politics of region, with a focus on Libya. Brahimi’s work has appeared in a variety of academic journals and edited volumes, and with think tanks such as the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, IISS, and the Carnegie Middle East Center. Her commentary for a wider audience has been published by the Guardian, Foreign Policy, the Telegraph and Al Jazeera, and she appears regularly in the broadcast media.

Brahimi read for an undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She then read for a master’s (MPhil) and PhD (DPhil) in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she also taught undergraduate and graduate students and completed her postdoctoral research.