From 2015-16 he was senior advisor in the Secretary of State's Office of Religion & Global Affairs at the
U.S. Department of State. His previous government work has included serving as a member of the State Department's
Policy Planning Staff (2011–12) under former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, where he was part of the team that helped to shape the U.S. response to the
Arab Spring. Since 2000 his primary professional home has been
George Mason University in
Virginia,
United States where he is Professor of International Affairs in the
Schar School of Policy and Government. At Mason he has also served as founding director of the Center for Global Studies and director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies (now called the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies). Earlier in his academic career he was lecturer in international relations at the
University of Kent at Canterbury (1998-2000). In 2022 he joined the United States Institute of Peace as a senior advisor for religion and inclusive societies. He has also been a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution (2012–15; 2017–2021) and currently a senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. Previously he was a visiting senior fellow at the
Pew Research Center (2009–10), and an Adjunct Scholar at the
RAND Corporation (2012–15; 2017-2018). He is widely regarded as a leading expert on
political Islam, Middle East affairs, and on Muslim communities in Europe and North America. He has authored numerous book chapters and journal articles, contributed to publications such as the
International Herald Tribune, The Guardian,
The Atlantic, and
Foreign Policy, and has consulted extensively for media, government and non-profit agencies. ==Major publications==