Ahmed Ajil holds a PhD in Criminology and is an Assistant Professor of Behavioural Sciences, specialising in criminology and security research, at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences and Psychology.

Ahmed Ajil studied International Relations at the Universities of Geneva and Alicante, and completed an MA in Applied Security Strategy at the University of Exeter, where he wrote his dissertation on ‘British foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq’. He then worked in the NGO sector in Jordan before embarking on a Master of Law in Criminology and Security at the University of Lausanne, including an exchange semester at the Université de Montréal. His Master’s thesis was on the topic ‘Security from below: A qualitative analysis of Syrian and Iraqi refugees’ human (in)security’.

His doctoral thesis at the University of Lausanne and the Faculty of Political Science at Université Laval in Québec was supported by the Doc.CH grant. In it, he examined politico-ideological mobilisation and violence in the context of conflicts in the Arab world. The resulting book, *Politico-ideological violence and mobilisation in the Arab World: All in*, was published by Routledge in 2023.

His research project, ‘Decrypting and evaluating the Swiss anti-terror dispositif’, was supported by the SNF Postdoc.Mobility and included research stays at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg im Breisgau and the London School of Oriental and African Studies. With funding from the “Relations Internationales” fund of the Universities of Lausanne and Brussels (ULB), he researched the structures of extremism prevention in Switzerland and Belgium.

Outside his academic activities, Ahmed Ajil worked as a research fellow in the field of the prison service (Swiss Centre of Excellence for the Prison Service), where he published the handbook *Dynamic Security in Detention* in 2022. He also worked as a criminal analyst at the Federal Office of Police (fedpol).

Main Research Areas

• Security and Crime
• Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism
• Radicalisation and Extremism
• Crime Prevention and Policy
• Sociology of Law
• Migration
• Religion
• Racism and decolonisation