Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is an award-winning 15-year
investigative journalist, noted international security scholar, bestselling
author, and film-maker. He tracks the 'war on terror' in the context of what he
calls the 'Crisis of Civilisation.'
He is'System Shift'
columnist at VICE's science magazine Motherboard, weekly columnist at Middle East Eye, and the creator of
INSURGEintelligence, a crowdfunded public interest investigative journalism
project. Previously, Nafeez wrote The Guardian's 'Earth insight' blog
between April 2013 and July 2014. From July 2016 to January 2017 he was Global Editor at The Canary, the British journalism start-up which is now in the Top 100 UK websites.
His work has been published in The Guardian, VICE,
Independent on Sunday, The Independent, The Scotsman, Sydney Morning Herald,
The Age, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, New York Observer, The New Statesman, Prospect, Le
Monde diplomatique, Raw Story, New Internationalist, Huffington Post UK,
Al-Arabiya English, AlterNet, The Ecologist, and Asia Times, among other
places.
Exclusive stories broken by Nafeez via INSURGEintelligence
have been covered by USA Today, Global Post, The Guardian, The Independent,
Washington Post, The Metro, The Week, News Corp's news.com.au, Discovery News,
Channel 4 News, Forbes, Columbia Journalism Review, Gigaom, and FutureZone.
His INSURGEintelligence reporting on the rise of the
'Islamic State' (ISIS/IS) made national headlines in Germany, receiving
extensive coverage in Die Welt, News.de, General Anzeiger, FOCUS Online, WAZ
(Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung), Hamburger Abendblatt, Ostthuringer Zeitung,
Junge Welt, German TV news channel n-TV, and Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten.
It was also featured in Al Jazeera English's 2015 feature documentary, Enemy of
Enemies: The Rise of ISIL.
In 2015, Nafeez won the Project Censored Award for
Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian story on the energy
politics of the Ukraine crisis.
The previous year he won another Project Censored Award for his first ever Guardian article
covering the heightened risk of civil unrest due to climate-induced food
crises.
In 2010, Nafeez won the Routledge-GCPS Essay Prize for his
academic paper on the 'Crisis of Civilisation' published in the journal Global
Change, Peace and Security.
He also won the Premio Napoli (Naples Prize) in 2003, Italy's most prestigious literary award created by decree of the President of the Republic.
Nafeez has twice been featured in the Evening Standard's 'Top 1,000' list of most influential people in London, in 2014 and 2015.
He also won the Premio Napoli (Naples Prize) in 2003, Italy's most prestigious literary award created by decree of the President of the Republic.
Nafeez has twice been featured in the Evening Standard's 'Top 1,000' list of most influential people in London, in 2014 and 2015.
His critically-acclaimed feature documentary, The Crisis of Civilization (2011) co-produced with Dean Puckett, was screened at numerous film festivals
including the Leeds International Film Festival where it was voted a Festival
Favourite; SEE Brighton Documentary Film Festival; Portobello Film Festival;
Aldeburgh DocFest Fringe; the International Human Rights Film Festival in
Buenos Aires; Cinema Planeta in Mexico; Oslo Dokumentarkino; Crossroads
Festival in Graz; and Elevate Festival in Graz; among others. The Crisis of
Civilization has received over half a million views online.
Nafeez was an associate producer for Puckett's 2013 feature
documentary, Grasp the Nettle, which was also widely exhibited in official
selections across the film festival circuit.
Nafeez is the author of six non-fiction books on
international security: Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence (SpringerBriefs in Energy, 2017); A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How
to Save It (Pluto/Macmillan, 2010); The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry
(Duckworth, 2006); The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of
Terrorism (Interlink, 2005); Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy
and the Struggle for Iraq (New Society, 2003) and The War on Freedom: How + Why
America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 (Progressive, 2002).
The latter, Nafeez's first book, is archived in the ‘9/11 Commission Materials’ Special Collection at the US National Archives in
Washington DC – it was among 99 books made available to each 9/11 Commissioner
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to use
during their investigations. It was also the first book used by members of the
9/11 Family Steering Committee to help set the lines of inquiry for the 9/11
Commission. In 2005, Nafeez testified in US Congress on Western security policy
toward al-Qaeda. That testimony was televised nationally on C-SPAN, and can be
read via the Congressional Record.
His fourth book, The London Bombings, was launched in the
House of Lords by Lord Rea and supported by two 7/7 survivors, John Tulloch and
Rachel North. The London Bombings was the basis of Nafeez's special 7/7investigative report sponsored and launched by Britain's leading human rights
law firm, Garden Court Chambers, with the support of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.
The report was mandatory reading for all legal counsel in the Coroner's Inquest
into the London Bombings of 7 July 2005.
Nafeez's sixth book, ZERO POINT (Curiosity Quills Press, 2014), is a science fiction
thriller inspired by true events.
A recovering academic, Nafeez holds a PhD in International
Relations from the University of Sussex,
where he taught politics and history. His seventh book, Failing States, Collapsing Systems, published in 2017 by the top global science publisher Springer, is a scientific monograph on the socio-systemic causes of civil unrest in environmental, energy and economic
crises.
Since 2015, Nafeez has been Visiting Research Fellow at the Global
Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University's Faculty of Science and
Technology, which supported his completion of his Springer research project.
Nafeez has advised the British Foreign Office, the Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst, the UK Defence Academy, the Metropolitan Police
Service on delivery of the Home Office’s Channel Project, and the UK
Parliamentary Inquiry into UK counter-terrorism strategy - which extensively
cited his written evidence in its final report and recommendations to
government.
A sought after media commentator, Nafeez's appearances
include BBC Newsnight, BBC's The Big Questions, BBC News 24, BBC World Today,
BBC World News with George Alagiah, BBC Radio Five Live, BBC Asian Network,
Channel 4 News, Sky News, CNN, ABC News (Australia), FOX News with Sean
Hannity, Bloomberg, PBS Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, and many others
worldwide.
Nafeez once had a verbal spat with the late Christopher
Hitchens on the pages of Vanity Fair about Gore Vidal. This culminated in
Nafeez's widely-shared longread take-down of Hitchens in the Independent on Sunday.
