Dr. Shiraz Maher: “Radicalisation and the foreign-fighter phenomenon”

Back in March 2016, Dr. Shiraz Maher, Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR). discussed with us ‘Radicalisation and the foreign-fighter phenomenon’

Shiraz is currently coordinating ICSR’s research on the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, as well as researching the development of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, and jihadist organizations in the broader Middle East. Within ICSR he is engaged in an expansive study of foreign fighters participating in the Syrian conflict, and has developed an extensive database of several hundred fighters, monitoring their social media footprint. The primary focus of his research is to explore, understand, and explain what motivates young men to become foreign fighters. As a result of this research he has been invited to give evidence before three parliamentary committees.

Shiraz is also a lecturer at King’s College London, where he teaches a course on home-grown radicalisation (along with Peter Neumann), whilst also being an adjunct at Johns Hopkins University. He was also awarded the first Konrad Adenauer Foundation Fellowship in Energy Security (2012-2013) based at the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS) where he explored the impact of political unrest in the Middle East on energy markets.