Peter Mandaville

Peter Mandaville is a professor of government and politics in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. From 2015-16 he was a Senior Advisor in the Office of Religion and Global Affairs at the U.S. State Department. Previous government experience includes serving as a member of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff from 2011-12 where he helped shape the U.S. response to the Arab Spring. At Mason he was previously the Founding Director of the Center for Global Studies and also Director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. His previous visiting affiliations have included American University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Pew Research Center. 

He is the author of, among other titles, Islam and Politics (Routledge, 2007; 2nd edition, 2014), a broad global overview of Islamic social and political movements, and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (Routledge, 2001), a study of Muslim communities in the United Kingdom. Mandaville also is coeditor of several volumes of essays in the fields of international relations and Islamic Studies, including Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas and Networks (Columbia University Press, 2012).

In addition to his numerous book chapters and journal articles, he has contributed to publications such as Foreignpolicy.com, Foreignaffairs.com, the International Herald Tribune, the Atlantic, and the Guardian. He has also consulted widely for government, media, and nongovernmental organizations on contemporary Muslim world affairs, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on political Islam and human rights in the Middle East.

His research has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born and raised in the Middle East—the third generation of his family to live in the region—his research has taken him to a wide range of Muslim settings such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and West Africa.

View Peter Mandaville's CV

Areas of Research:

• Islam and Politics
• Religion and International Relations
• Middle East
• Information Technology and Social Change
• Emerging Powers and World Order