Professor Thomas Hegghammer

I am a political scientist and historian who studies rebel groups: why they form, how they operate, and what explains their varying fates. Much of my work has focused on Islamist militancy, as illustrated by my books Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (2010) and The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad (2020). I am currently working on a book about the long history of jihadism. I also like to explore quirky but important features of clandestine activism that cut across ideological families. One example is the role of art and ritual, a topic I pursued in Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists (2017, edited). Another is identity mimicry, which I explored in the book Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict (2024; edited with Diego Gambetta). My next project in this vein is on the dynamics of manhunts. My work involves a range of methods from ethnography via qualitative analysis to computational approaches. I am particularly interested in the application of machine learning tools to historical research, and each Trinity term I teach a graduate-level course on computational methods for humanists and social scientists.