Gerard Russell worked for 14 years as a British and United Nations diplomat, and has lived in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Jeddah as well as Kabul (where he was based from 2007 to 2009, working with the British Embassy and then with UNAMA). He also pioneered work by the British government to address Middle Eastern audiences in Arabic, in 2001 to 2003 and was honoured by the British Government for this work in 2002. He speaks Arabic and Dari. He is a graduate of Oxford University, has an M.A. in philosophy from London University, and was a Research Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2010 to 2011. He is a Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation’s International Security Program as well as a Senior Associate of the Foreign Policy Centre in London, and in 2014 published his first book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the disappearing religions of the Middle East.