Associate Professor of Security Studies in the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is the Founding Director of the Critical Security Studies Graduate Program (MCSS) and the director of the Strategic Studies Unit in the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies. He obtained his doctorate degree in Political Science (Armed Conflict and International Security Studies) from McGill University in Canada and his BSc and MA in Political Science (International Relations) from the American University in Cairo. Professor Ashour is specialised in asymmetric warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency, Islamist movements and ideologies, democratization (with focus on security sector reform and civil-military relations), security, terrorism, and strategic military studies. His published works covered the Arab World, the Post-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western and Southern Europe. His scholarly publications appeared in Foreign Affairs, Terrorism and Political Violence, International Affairs, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Middle East Journal, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Studies, and others academic journals. He is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements (Routledge, 2009) and How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh University Press/Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2020).