AbdelWahab El-Affendi is a political scientist and a distinguished writer on topics dealing with Islamic thought in its various facets: encounter with modernity, Islam and Politics, Islam and Democracy, Multiculturalism, Islam in the West, Muslim Intellectuals and Sudanese and Middle Eastern Politics. He was born in Sudan with dual British and Sudanese Citizenship, he has lived in the UK since 1982. He educated at the Universities of Khartoum, Wales. He was previously Founder and Coordinator of the Centre’s Democracy and Islam Programme and Reader in Politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster (1998-2015). He is a media commentator, in both Arabic and English. He is currently Provost and Acting President of the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar and Professor of Politics and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is author of Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan (1991), Who Needs an Islamic State? (1991), Revolution and Political Reform in Sudan (1995), Rethinking Islam and Modernity (2001), For a State of Peace: Conflict and the Future of Democracy in Sudan (2002), The Conquest of Muslim Hearts and Minds: Perspectives on U.S. Reform and Public Diplomacy Strategies (2005) and The People on the Edge: Religious Reform and the Burden of the Western Muslim Intellectual (2010). He is also member of the Advisory Council of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Centre for Contemporary Islamic Studies, University of Edinburgh, member of the Board of Directors of Inter-Africa Group (Addis Ababa), and a trustee of the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue (UK). He has served as Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Islamic Studies at Cambridge University, and Visiting Fellow/Professor at the Christian Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway (1995 and 2003), Northwestern University (2002), and the International Centre for Islamic Thought and Civilization, Kuala Lumpur (2008). Dr. El-Affendi was a member of the core team of authors of the Arab Human Development Report (2004) and a member of the Advisory Board and a contributor to the 2005 report. He is editor of Genocidal Nightmares: Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities (Bloomsbury, 2015). He is also a member of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, member of the Board of Directors of Inter-Africa Group, and a trustee of the International Forum for Islamic Dialogue, and on the AMSS UK Advisory Board.