About Aaron Y. Zelin

Dr. Aaron Y. Zelin’s experiences researching and working in the academic and policy world provides him with a unique ability to bridge the gap between academically rigorous research and providing a practical way of understanding complex and nuanced issues, especially as it relates to the Islamic and Middle Eastern world.
Currently, he is the Richard Borrow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a Visiting Research Scholar at Brandeis University. He is author of the forthcoming book “Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad” (Columbia University Press).

Dr. Zelin’s research focuses on Sunni Arab jihadi groups in North Africa and Syria as well as the trend of foreign fighting, online jihadism, and jihadi governance. He is the author of a number of reports including the New America Foundation’s January 2013 study The State of the Global Jihad Online, the June 2014 Washington Institute study The War Between ISIS and al-Qaeda for Supremacy of the Global Jihadist Movement, the January 2016 Washington Institute study The Islamic State’s Territorial Methodology, the editor of the June 2017 Washington Institute study How al-Qaeda Survived Drones, Uprisings, and the Islamic State; the January 2018 Washington Institute study The Others: Foreign Fighters in Libya; and most recently the September 2018 Washington Institute study Tunisian Foreign Fighters in Iraq and Syria.

This blog is for academic purposes only and it does not endorse any of the jihadi material that is posted on it. Jihadology is a personal project of Aaron Y. Zelin and is not associated with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.