Summary 
Dr Hellyer specialises in socio-economic and political advisory services on the Middle East and Europe. Previously Fellow at the Brookings Institution (USA), he was appointed as Senior Practice Consultant at Gallup in 2011, and served as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce after the London bombings in 2005. 

Previously Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, Dr Hellyer was also the UK Foreign Office’s first ESRC Fellow, where he gave expert opinion on socio-economic and political issues.

With an extensive international network, and easy access to the offices of prime ministers and presidents worldwide, Dr Hellyer has held senior international posts in academia, including the research equivalent of associate professor at the University of Warwick and visiting professorships at the American University in Cairo and at the Universiti Teknologi in Malaysia. Parallel to his government advisory portfolios, he was also a member of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. 

Dr Hellyer delivers speeches and conference papers, and engages with opinion leaders in government, media, business, and other sectors. He also engages different sectors to further different management consultancy practices worldwide. 

A contributor to Oxford Analytica, he has also served as a consultant for various British Council in Europe, North America, and MENA. A United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Global Expert, he is a member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, the Royal United Services Institute (U.K. and Qatar) & the International Institute of Strategic Studies of London, Singapore, Bahrain, and Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Hellyer has written several books and more than 25 book chapters/journal articles in international presses on Europe & MENA. He has authored several hundred media submissions for publications including The Huffington Post, Reuters, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy & The New York Times.

Full Biography

H.A. Hellyer is a British public intellectual who focuses on the politics of the modern Middle East, majority-minority relations, security issues, and Muslim world - West relations. A prolific author, he was previously at the Brookings Institution (USA) and the University of Warwick (UK) and appointed as Senior Practice Consultant at Gallup in 2011. Dr Hellyer was appointed as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce on Tackling Radicalisation and Extremism in the aftermath of the London bombings in 2005. He was also the UK Foreign Office’s first Economic and Social Research Council’s Placement Fellow, where he gave expert opinion on Muslim communities and counter-terrorism issues.

==Early life & educational background==

Dr Hellyer was raised between the UK and the Middle East, spending a great deal of time in Cairo, Egypt, as well as Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. A product of international schools in the UK and the Arab world, including Hill House, the London grammar school that Prince Charles attended, Hellyer read his Law degree at the University of Sheffield's School of Law, before going on to receive a Master of Arts in International Political Economy at the same university's renowned Department of Politics. There, he studied with the likes of Professors Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (famous expert on the politics of the former USSR), Anthony Payne (noted author on international development and the Caribbean) and Graham Harrison (specialist on Africa and governance). Against the background of this multi-regional educational background, building on his already burgeoning expertise on the Middle East & North Africa and Europe, Hellyer began researching the legal systems of the broader contemporary Muslim world. As an undergraduate, he was already publishing in academic arenas, as well as wider media.

Following his receiving degrees in Law and International Political Economy from Sheffield, Hellyer received an Economic and Social Research Council doctoral scholarship to read for his PhD at the University of Warwick. His PhD, which was multi-disciplinary and engaged with politics, history, law and sociology, was supervised by Professor M. Anwar (formerly of the British government’s Commission for Racial Equality) of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, then Europe’s premier research unit dedicated to examining race and ethnic relations. During his doctoral career, Hellyer travelled regularly to the Middle East to engage in further research.

Hellyer’s PhD was examined, and passed with minor corrections, by Professors James Beckford & James Piscatori – the former was a world famous authority (and now Professor Emeritus) on the sociology of religion, while the latter was a celebrated Oxford University don on the politics of the Arab and wider Muslim worlds (currently serving as the Head of the School of Government and International Affairs at the University of Durham).

==Early career: the UK & the Arab world==

Upon receiving his PhD, Dr Hellyer was made Fellow of the University of Warwick, and remained connected to Warwick for a decade. He was eventually appointed as Senior Research Fellow, the research equivalent of Associate Professor, at the university, and published prolifically in academic journals, edited books, as well as writing several monographs of his own. His early academic acumen attracted the attention of the UK Government, which appointed Dr Hellyer as Deputy Convenor of its taskforce on Tackling Radicalisation and Extremism in the aftermath of the 2005 bombings – a month after Dr Hellyer received his doctorate.

Following the taskforce’s deliberations and tenure, Dr Hellyer continued to advise different parts of the UK government, but eventually decided to move to the Middle East to engage in further research, understand the region through a different lens as a promising academic, and expand his knowledge base in the area. He was appointed as Professor of Law at the American University in Cairo, the Arab world’s premier liberal arts institution, where he remained for a time, as well as engaging in research within the United Arab Emirates. He began then a long professional relationship with Egypt – a country that he would later see go through its most monumental change in modern history.

==Think-tanks and government: the USA==

While in the UK, Dr Hellyer had already been invited to join the Young Foundation as Fellow (the UK’s leading social enterprise think-tank), as well as Demos (then the leading progressive think-tank). After his time in Cairo, Dr Hellyer moved to Washington, D.C., where he became Ford Fellow in Project on US-Islamic World Relations at the Centre for Middle Policy in the Foreign Policy section of the Brookings Institution – known worldwide as one of the top think-tanks in the world. There, Dr Hellyer published work on counter-terrorism strategies, as well as engaging at senior levels of the ‘Beltway’ policy establishment.

Eventually, Dr Hellyer felt it was time to return to the UK – and was appointed as Economic & Social Research Council Placement Fellow at the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office, with a focus on Muslim communities and counter-terrorism issues. There, Dr Hellyer was the first in an experiment to bring together policy and government – his office was in the UK’s Foreign Office, with the requisite security clearance, but the University of Warwick, where Dr Hellyer had maintained a close academic relationship, employed him. In that regard, Dr Hellyer maintained his intellectual freedom, but was able to inform policy from within the establishment. At this time, he also became associated with the University of Oxford, after being appointed as member of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies at the university.

Some of the institutions and organisations he engaged with during this time included the Department for Communities and Local Government and the House of Commons in the U.K., the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department in the U.S., and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

==Research entrepreneurship and Southeast Asia & Africa==

In 2008, Dr Hellyer with other colleagues founded the VC Group – a consortium of experts worldwide that sought to make their research and analysis relevant and pertinent for policy. Simultaneously, Hellyer moved to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where he became a Fellow at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies. Using Kuala Lumpur and Cairo as bases, Hellyer led a project looking at governance and educational issues in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines, with comparative work done on Ethiopia and South Africa.

In Malaysia, Hellyer continued his own private research, probing contemporary intellectual thought in the region. He maintained this interest, and was later appointed as a visiting professor at the Universiti Teknologi in Malaysia, where he gave a keynote speech for Her Highness, Raja Zarith Sofiah of the State of Johor, on contemporary Muslim intellectual thought.

During this time, Dr Hellyer was also appointed as Senior Academic Advisor to Soliya: a United Nations Alliance of Civilisations implementation organisation, which was focusing on developing relations between the Muslim world and the West through social media and university education. He also published a book entitled,”The ‘Other’ Europeans: Muslims of Europe” with Edinburgh University Press, which was a contemporary study of minority-majority relations in the context of religious pluralism in Europe.

==The Arab Awakening==

In December 2010, Dr Hellyer moved to Cairo – a city he had spent much time in over the preceding years. Within a few weeks of arriving, the Arab Awakening began in Tunisia, which Hellyer observed from nearby Egypt – and then the Egyptian revolution on the 25^th of January 2011 commenced.

At first, like most observers within and without Egypt, Hellyer did not expect the protests to lead to very much. Within a few days, however, he was in Tahrir Square, remained in Cairo throughout the 18 days that saw the end of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency, and was in the crowds in Tahrir the night that Mubarak’s departure was announced. Hellyer credits this time with beginning a process that saw ‘the fall of many masks’, as old assumptions and stereotypes about the region and its people collapsed overnight.

When the Libyan revolution against Gaddafi began shortly thereafter, Hellyer threw his weight completely behind the resistance forces, and wrote prolifically in venues such as the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, al-Masry al-Youm, Daily News Egypt, Daily Star (Malaysia), Religion Dispatches and other fora on the changes that were taking place in the region. He became as much an advocate, as an analyst; as much of an activist, as a scholar.

==The Gallup Organisation==

From Cairo, Dr Hellyer was appointed as Senior Practice Consultant and Senior Analyst at the Gallup Organisation, stationed primarily in the United Arab Emirates. His mandate included the writing of reports, articles, and white papers on contemporary issues within the Muslim world, presents speeches and conference papers, and engages with opinion leaders in government, media, business, and other sectors. With an extensive background in several geographic regions, his mandate included furthering Gallup’s different management consultancy practices worldwide, and analyzing complex survey data from the groundbreaking ‘Gallup World Poll’ from over 100 countries and incorporates historical, political, and cultural knowledge to provide context for research findings.

==Other affiliations and memberships==

A contributor to Oxford Analytica, Dr Hellyer has also served as a consultant for various British Council and Gallup Poll initiatives in Europe, North America, and the Middle East. He is also a member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (U.K.), the Royal United Services Institute (U.K. and Qatar), and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (U.S.). Dr. Hellyer is a United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Global Expert, and a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies of London, Singapore, Bahrain, and Washington, D.C.

==Selected Publications==

Dr. Hellyer has written several books and monographs, including Muslims of Europe: The “Other” Europeans (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and Engagement With the Muslim Community and Counter-Terrorism (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). He has contributed more than 25 book chapters and journal articles to various international presses and publishers, including the recently published “The Chance for Change in the Arab World” in International Affairs, the Chatham House Journal. He has authored several hundred op-eds and media submissions for publications including The Huffington Post, Reuters, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Prospect, cafebabel.com, Jurist, New Statesman, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Middle East Online, The National, Gulf News, Khaleej Times, The Daily News Egypt, Today’s Zaman, and The Straits Times.