Dr. Harrison Akins is a political scientist and writer, based in Washington, DC. For more than a decade, he has been researching, writing, and advising on South Asian politics, conflict, governance and development, and U.S. foreign policy from several positions within both academia and the U.S. government. His research, relying on both quantitative and qualitative methods, has been published in a number of scholarly journals, including Terrorism and Political Violence, Asian Security, Asian Survey, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, Oxford Middle East Review, and Journal for Muslim Minority Affairs. A frequent contributor to the media, his essays have been featured in the Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, BBC, Al Jazeera, USA Today, Huffington Post, India Times, the Guardian, and the Tennessean, among other outlets. He is the author of The Terrorism Trap: How the War on Terror Escalates Violence in America’s Partner States (Columbia University Press, 2023) and Conquering the Maharajas: India’s Princely States and the End of Empire, 1930-50 (Manchester University Press, 2023).

Dr. Akins received his PhD in Political Science, with concentrations in International Relations and Public Policy, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He also earned a Graduate Certificate in Global Security Studies from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics, an MA in Philosophy & Classics (the Great Books Program) from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, and a BA in History and Music Performance from American University in Washington, DC.