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Centre for the Study of the International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa

 

Biography

George Joffé has focused on Mediterranean affairs for many years, alongside his professional interests in the Middle East and North Africa.

He currently teaches a postgraduate course at the University of Cambridge, as an affiliate lecturer, on the international relations and geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa which contains a significant component on Mediterranean issues and Euro-Mediterranean policy.  He has been engaged in research and teaching on these regions since 1978 and has published widely on them in academic journals and books as well as editing six books on these and similar subjects.  He holds a professorial fellowship at the Global Policy Institute in London Metropolitan University and at the Royal United Services Institute, as well as a visiting professorship in geography at King’s College, London University.

Between 1997 and 2000, he was the deputy-director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, where he had previously organized a research programme on the Barcelona Process (Euro-Mediterranean Partnership).  From 1996, he was a member of the EuroMeSCo network, researching on Mediterranean security issues and bringing together European and South Mediterranean security institutes in such endeavours.  From 2000, he was directly involved in the management of the network through the Instituto de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais in Lisbon.  This required the organization of workshops and conferences on issues of Euro-Mediterranean policy in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa.  Between 2007 and 2010 he was also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Islamic Studies in the University of Oxford and is currently a senior member of St Anthony’s College in the University of Oxford.

He is also currently an analyst for Noref, in Norway, advising the Norwegian government on issues of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and North African security.  He is also a consultant on these affairs to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the State Department in the United States, the Pentagon, Africom and the Ministry of Defence.  He has also advised the European Commission (DG Relex), EuropAid and the new External Action Service on issues of European Mediterranean policy.  He also lectures regularly on these issues for the Royal College of Defence Studies, the NATO Defence College in Rome, and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Publications

Key publications: 

“The European Union, democracy and counter-terrorism in the Maghrib”, Journal of Common Market Studies46, 1 (January 2008)

“Political dynamics in North Africa,” International Affairs85, 4 (September 2009)

“The Arab Spring : origins and prospects,” Journal of North African Studies16, 4 (December 2011)

“The Arab Spring revisited,” in Joffé, George (2013)(ed), North Africa’s Arab Spring, Routledge (London)

“Trajectories of radicalisation: Algeria 1989-1999” in Joffé, George (2011), Islamist radicalisation in North Africa: politics and process, Routledge (London)

“Radicalism, extremism and government in North Africa”, in Siniver A. (2010)(ed), International Terrorism post 9/11: Comparative Dynamics and Responses, Routledge (London)

“North Africa and Europe,” in Adebajo A. and Whiteman K. (eds.) The EU and Africa: From Eurafrique to Afro-europa?Hurst (2012).

“Prodigal or pariah: foreign policy in Libya”, in Vandewalle D (2008)(ed), Libya since 1969: Qadhafi’s revolution revisited, Palgrave (New York)

“Confrontational mutual perceptions and images: Orientalism and Occidentalism in Europe and the Islamic world,”International Spectator (European challenges of migration and integration) 42, 2 (April-June 2007)

"Islam in the Maghrib and Maghribi Islam", in Rosander E.E. and Westerlund D. (1997)(eds), Islam in Africa and African Islam, Hurst and Co (London)

Professor George  Joffé
Not available for consultancy

Affiliations

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