Thomas Hegghammer
Associate, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs/International Security Program
Contact:
Email: thomas_hegghammer@hks.harvard.edu
Website: http://hegghammer.com/
Experience
Thomas Hegghammer (b. 1977; B.A. & M.Phil. Oxon, Ph.D. Sciences-Po Paris) is a political scientist working on violent Islamism and Middle East politics. He is a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University in 2007–2008 and a visiting fellow at King's College London in 2005–2006.
Dr. Hegghammer is the author of Jihad in Arabia (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and co-author of Al-Qaida in its Own Words (Harvard University Press, 2008). He has written several book chapters and articles for journals such as the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the British Journal of Middle East Studies, the Middle East Journal, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. He has also written about Saudi Arabia for the International Crisis Group and for Oxford Analytica.
Dr Hegghammer has testified in parliamentary hearings on anti-terrorism legislation in Canada (2005) and Denmark (2006). While at Harvard, he will write his second monograph, a historical biography of the jihadi ideologue Abdallah Azzam.
A fluent Arabic speaker, Dr Hegghammer has conducted extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Muslim world.
AP Photo
November 11, 2009
"The Big Impact of Small Footprints"
Op-Ed, Foreign Policy
By Thomas Hegghammer, Associate, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs/International Security Program
"The power of small incidents has increased in the past decade thanks to the Internet. Increasing bandwidth, cheaper digital cameras and fast-learning activists have turned the world wide web into a giant propaganda tool which can generate powerful visual messages and project them instantly to a global audience. The smallest detail can be dramatically enlarged and turned into a symbol of 'Muslim suffering at the hands of non-Muslims.' On jihadi discussion forums such as Faloja (named after the Iraqi city whose 2004 battles between jihadis and U.S. forces made it an icon of Muslim suffering), high-quality video productions appear on a daily basis. The relationship between objective physical destruction and jihadi mobilization has never been less linear."
Belfer Center
Summer 2009
"Featured Fellows: Thomas Hegghammer and Maya Tudor"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By Thomas Hegghammer, Associate, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs/International Security Program and Maya Tudor, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program/Intrastate Conflict Program, 2008-2009
Belfer Center Research Fellows Thomas Hegghammer and Maya Tudor conduct policy-relevant research.
AP Photo
May 4, 2009
"Irreparable Damage"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Foreign Policy
By Thomas Hegghammer, Associate, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs/International Security Program
"The bottom line is that the damage caused by Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib is irreparable and the end of U.S. torture will not in itself make the United States safer from this generation of jihadists. Ending torture in the United States is obviously important, but it will only bring security benefits if it is part of a broader policy package that includes pressure on allied regimes to do the same."
Belfer Center
January 22, 2009
"The Origins of Global Jihad: Explaining the Arab Mobilization to 1980s Afghanistan"
Policy Memo
By Thomas Hegghammer, Associate, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs/International Security Program
The Arab involvement in Afghanistan was the result of two main factors: the entrepreneurship of the Palestinian preacher Abdallah Azzam, and the rise of a "soft pan-Islamism" promoted since the mid-1970s by non-violent international Islamic organizations such as the Muslim World League.
This policy memo is based on Thomas Hegghammer's ISP brownbag seminar presentation.
