Thomas Hegghammer
Thomas Hegghammer is Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. Trained in Middle East Studies at Oxford University and Sciences-Po in Paris, he has held fellowships at Harvard, Princeton, New York, and Stanford Universities, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His books and edited volumes include Al-Qaida in its own Words (Harvard, 2008), Jihad in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, 2010), The Meccan Rebellion (Amal, 2011), Saudi Arabia in Transition (Cambridge, 2014), and Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists (Cambridge, forthcoming).
The former self-declared caliphate of the Islamic State (IS), once the size of Britain, has collapsed. Its attractiveness to the global jihadi movement also became evident in Germany. The German Federal Domestic Intelligence Service (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) estimates that more than 1.050 Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have left Germany for Syria and Iraq of whom, to […]
This policy brief examines the role former extremists and former combatants have in countering violent extremism (CVE). ‘The former’ as a special category of actor in CVE activities, including in peacebuilding settings, has gained significant attention in recent years. Various organisations and governments have utilised formers in CVE activities yet it remains unclear if and […]
Hardi N. once said about himself “I am a believer, but not a radical“. That view was not shared by the AIVD (the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service) and the Dutch National Police. Hardi was arrested in late 2014 for attempting to travel to Syria and subsequently convicted. After serving a short prison sentence, […]