Dr. Muhanad Seloom is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at Gulf International Forum. He is Assistant Professor of International Politics and Security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter.

His research examines how states authorize power through intelligence institutions and emerging technologies, with particular attention to the Gulf, Iraq, and the wider Middle East. He is the author of Labelling Ethno-Political Groups as Terrorists: The Case of the PKK in Türkiye (Routledge, 2025); his second book, The History and Politics of Iraqi Intelligence, 1915–2025, is under review at Cambridge University Press.

Before academia, Dr. Seloom advised the U.S. Department of State, the UK Ministry of Defence, and Qatar’s National Cyber Security Agency, among other governmental bodies. He speaks Arabic, English, and Kurdish, and appears regularly on Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, and Arabic-language television.