Dr. Hesham Alghannam is a Saudi political scientist and a former Fulbright Fellow at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, where he received a master’s degree in International Policy studies. Dr. Alghannam holds PhD from the University of Exeter. He is also a former Senior Research Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and a former Senior Advisor and Program director of the International Studies program at the Gulf Research Centre, Cambridge. Dr. Alghannam is a geopolitical expert and strategy adviser to senior executives operating globally. Dr. Alghannam is a regular speaker at international conferences and provides analysis for leading international institutes, think tanks and media outlets on the topics of policy and strategy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and abroad. He has also worked with the major research centers of the Middle East on issues such as conducting fieldwork in conflict zones, ballistic missiles, the political economy of the GCC states, social movements, the Arab upheavals, political Islam, war strategies and crisis management. He is also one of the most prominent Arab experts and analysts in international media and think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, The Atlantic Council, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Gulf International Forum, the Washington Post, Reuters, CBS, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Le Figaro, Foreign Policy, The Chicago Tribune, Iran International, Al-Arabiya, Aljazeera (Arabic and English), Sky news, France 24, The National and Monte Carlo International, AFP, BBC (English, Arabic, and Farsi). Dr. Alghannam is currently working on developing research centers, training specialized cadres and programming electronic tools capable of analyzing advanced data using PHP and Python. Alghannam also have advanced degrees in technology, decision making process, automation of electronic models, electronic maps, automated publishing, visual modelling and content management. His various scientific backgrounds gave him the skill to reconcile theoretical and practical aspects to produce reliable research to be used in legislation and policymaking for decision-makers. Dr. Alghannam was recently nominated as a regional specialist to provide expert testimony for several International Relations Committees around the world. He authored and contributed to various impactful research studies and projects on GCC, Arab world, International Relations, nuclear weapons, and political economy. In addition to several lengthy articles and influential studies he has written on political economy of GCC States, Iran’s nuclear program, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, study of Radicalization, Political Islam, as well as the conflict between the GCC States and Iran, most of them have been translated into several languages. Dr. Alghannam authored and presented researches for various prominent European, Asian, and American think tanks on the structural changes in the Kingdom, as well as extremism and role of the Kingdom in influencing the Muslim and immigrant communities in Europe, the Arab upheavals, the Iranian nuclear program, as well as the conflict between the Kingdom and Iran.
