Dr. Peter Mandaville is Senior Advisor for Faith Engagement at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) where he leads on faith partnerships and religious engagement in humanitarian and development contexts around the world on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration, and also serves as the primary advisor on religion to USAID Administrator Samantha Power.

He was previously Senior Advisor for Religion & Inclusive Societies at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He is on leave from George Mason University where he is Professor of International Affairs in the Schar School of Policy and Government and Director of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies. He is also a Senior Research Fellow with Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. During the Obama administration he worked twice at the U.S. Department of State, from 2011-12 as a member of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff and again from 2015-16 as a Senior Advisor in the Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs. He was previously director and then co-director of the Center for Global Studies at George Mason University, and his visiting affiliations have included American University, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution, the RAND Corporation, and the Pew Research Center.

He is the author of, among other titles, Islam and Politics (Routledge, 2007; 3rd edition, 2020), a broad global overview of Islamic social and political movements, and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (Routledge, 2001), a study of Muslim communities in the United Kingdom. He also is co-editor of several volumes of essays in the fields of international relations and Islamic Studies, including The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power: How States Use Religion in Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2023), Wahhabism and the World: Understanding Saudi Arabia’s Global Impact on Islam (Oxford University Press, 2022), and Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas & Networks (Columbia University Press, 2012). In addition to his numerous book chapters and journal articles, he has contributed to publications such as Foreign Policy online, Foreign Affairs online, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. He has also testified before the U.S. Congress on political Islam and human rights in Saudi Arabia. His work has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the European Union, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.