We welcome Dr Zaheer Kazmi as a Visiting Scholar to the Mitchell Institute.

Dr Kazmi was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Mitchell Institute.  His interdisciplinary research centres on the global and transcultural history and politics of anarchism and radicalism, in Western and non-Western contexts.  He is also interested in the relationship between liberalism, violent and nonviolent dissent, and global Islam.

During his time at the Institute, he will provide research expertise and advice on the transnational/transcultural dimensions of Islamism to Institute Fellow Professor Eric Morier-Genoud's cross-country comparative project on Islamism in Africa; undertake research for a book he is currently writing on the global history of anarchism; and engage in rethinking 'civil war' in global and non-Western terms through research he has been developing in collaboration with Professor Faisal Devji (Oxford).

Dr Kazmi was formerly a diplomat and Senior Research Analyst at the UK Foreign Office where he worked on a range of issues in global peace and conflict.

Early in his career, he was also an international NGO interfaith practitioner and participated regularly at meetings of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.  An Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he has been an ESRC Mid-Career Fellow at the University of Oxford and has held visiting academic positions at the University of Cambridge and Sciences Po, Paris, and was formerly a Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford.

His academic publications include the monograph Polite Anarchy in International Relations Theory, 2012, two co-edited volumes (Contextualising Jihadi Thought, 2012; Islam After Liberalism, 2017), and several articles (including 'Automatic Islam', Modern Intellectual History, 2015, 'Free Market Islamism', Journal of Political Ideologies, 2018, 'Radical Islam in the Western Academy', Review of International Studies, 2022).

Beyond academia, he has published in a range of global media outlets on issues relating to radicalism and dissent, from political commentary (Foreign Affairs, Prospect, Open Democracy) to literary reviews and essays (The TLS, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Guardian, Aeon, The Brooklyn Rail, 3: AM Magazine, Tank).