CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford CA 94305-6165

hegg@stanford.edu

Research Interests
Militant Islamism; transnational terrorist groups; socio-cultural practices in terrorist groups

Thomas Hegghammer is the zukerman fellow at CISAC for 2012-2013 and senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo. He has previously held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at Harvard, Princeton and New York Universities. Thomas studies militant Islamism with a particular focus on transnational jihadi groups. His book Jihad in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge 2010) won the silver medal of the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council of Foreign Relations. He also co-authored Al-Qaida in its own Words (Harvard 2008) and The Meccan Rebellion (Amal Press 2011). His other publications include academic articles for International Security and the Journal of Peace Research, op-eds for the New York Times and the Guardian, and reports for the International Crisis Group and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He has commented widely in international media and has testified in parliamentary hearings on terrorism legislation in Canada and Denmark.  

Thomas currently works on two main research projects, one on the Islamist foreign fighter phenomenon and the other on socio-cultural practices (rituals, music, etc) in terrorist groups. He is in the process of completing two books: a monograph about the jihadi ideologue Abdallah Azzam and an edited volume about “jihad culture”, both for Cambridge University Press. While at CISAC, he will begin work on a new comparative study of socio-cultural practices in terrorist groups of different ideological persuasions.