Olivier Roy

Olivier Roy is Joint-Chair at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Social and Political Sciences Department of the EUI. He heads the Mediterranean programme and the ReligioWest research project (funded by the European Research Council). Since 1985, he has been a Senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research. Between 1993 and 1994, he headed the OSCE’s Mission for Tajikistan and was a Consultant for the UN Office of the Coordinator for Afghanistan, in 1998. Since 2003, Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and, from 2008 to 2009, Visiting Professor at Berkeley University. His fields of research include Afghanistan, Political Islam, the Middle East, Islam in the West and comparative religions. He is the author of “The Failure of Political Islam” (1994), “Globalized Islam” (2004), and “Holy Ignorance” (2010).