Dr H. A. Hellyer
Geopolitics · International Security · Geoeconomics · Strategic Advisory · MENA · Europe · Southeast Asia
Dr H.A. Hellyer advises governments, royal courts, sovereign wealth funds, and multinational corporations on geopolitics, international security, and geoeconomics. His work examines how developments in one region reshape the strategic and economic calculus in another, and what those shifts mean for policy, investment, and risk. Drawing on comparative expertise across the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia, he works from a single premise: regional change does not stay regional, but reshapes the wider international order. Born in the Gulf and educated across Abu Dhabi, Cairo, and London, he brings an international outlook shaped long before it became the focus of his professional life. He has served across DC and London’s most noted think-tanks in senior positions, including Brookings, RUSI, Carnegie, and the Atlantic Council. Two decades of scholarship and advisory work across the Middle East, the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia have sharpened that outlook into an analytical framework connecting Gulf alignment, European defence policy, and Southeast Asian strategic realignment.
ROLES
• Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the world’s oldest independent defence and security think tank, covering the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia. He is RUSI’s longest-serving Senior Associate Fellow.
• Senior Fellow in Geopolitics and Security, Center for American Progress (CAP), Washington, DC.
His prior institutional appointments include:
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Brookings Institution
• Harvard Kennedy School
• Atlantic Council
• University of Cambridge
• University of Warwick
• American University in Cairo
• Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia
GOVERNMENT AND SOVEREIGN ADVISORY
For more than two decades, Dr Hellyer has advised government ministries, intelligence agencies, and sovereign institutions across the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia on geopolitical risk, strategic competition, and foreign policy, including:
• UK Cabinet Office, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and Home Office
• US Department of State and US Department of Homeland Security
• European External Action Service
• Governments across the Arab world, Europe, and Southeast Asia
Early in his career, he served as Deputy Convenor of the UK Government’s Taskforce on Tackling Radicalisation and held the first Economic and Social Research Council Fellowship embedded within the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Counter-Terrorism Team. He has since briefed ministers, senior military officers, diplomats, and intelligence officials on geopolitical developments & strategic risk, across the Gulf, MENA, Southeast Asia, Washington & London.
CORPORATE AND STRATEGIC ADVISORY
The analytical framework he brings to governments extends directly to markets. Dr Hellyer advises multinational corporations, sovereign investors, financial institutions, and strategic consultancies on political risk, regional strategy, and long-term forecasting, applying the same cross-regional lens. Changes in Gulf alignments or European defence policy carry consequences for capital committed elsewhere, showing how geopolitical developments in one theatre reshape strategic and commercial decisions in another. He carries this analysis directly to decision-makers, briefing ministers, senior officials, and military leaders in government alongside board directors and the private sector.
Dr Hellyer also designs and chairs high-level policy dialogues that bring together ministers, diplomats, military leaders, business executives, and scholars across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on a career spanning academia, government, and advisory, he convenes communities that rarely engage with one another.
RESEARCH AND POLICY IMPACT
Dr Hellyer’s research examines the changing international order through the study of:
• Strategic competition and multipolarity, and the pursuit of strategic autonomy by middle powers
• Institutional and technological change in defence and foreign policy
• Political risk, geoeconomics, and energy security
• The interaction between domestic political change and foreign policy
Sustained field engagement across the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia grounds this work comparatively, connecting state resilience, and regional security to the broader transformation of the international system.
MEDIA AND PUBLICATIONS
Dr Hellyer read his Law degree at the University of Sheffield and his Masters in International Political Economy at the same, before completing a PhD in a multidisciplinary social sciences and humanities program at the University of Warwick, as the recipient of a UK Economics and Social Research Council scholarship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal United Services Institute, and the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations, and was named an Honoree of the Diversity in National Security Network.
Dr Hellyer is the author or editor of ten books, including A Revolution Undone: Egypt’s Road Beyond Revolt (Oxford University Press), Rethinking Religion & Radicalisation: Terrorism and Violence Twenty Years after 9/11 (Bloomsbury), and The Egyptian Revolution of 1919 (Bloomsbury), alongside numerous policy papers and reports on international security, geopolitics, and regional order. His analysis has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, War on the Rocks, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
He provides on-air analysis for CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and Deutsche Welle during major geopolitical developments. Throughout his work, his focus remains the same: helping decision-makers understand how regional transformations reshape the wider international system.
