Dr Timor Sharan

Dr Timor Sharan is the author of Inside Afghanistan: Political Networks, Informal Order, and State Disruption. His expertise is on the relationship between counterinsurgency efforts, transnational financial flows, and violence as well as organised crime, corruption, and the political economy of international state building with a particular focus on Afghanistan. He is also a fellow at the Centre on Armed Groups and a Research Associate Fellow with Overseas Development Institute. He was an Associate Fellow at the London School of Economics, IDEAS foreign policy think tank, in 2021-2022.

In 2020, he founded Afghanistan Policy Lab; the first policy hub to conduct experimental research, policy modelling and behavioural insights in the country. He was formerly the International Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Afghanistan and an Adjunct Professor at the American University of Afghanistan. Before this, he worked as a deputy minister for policy and programme for the Independent Directorate of Local Governance for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Since leaving the public sector, he has been advising governments and international organisations including USAID, FCDO, Open Society Foundations, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and others.

As a leading policy voice on Afghanistan, he has written policy articles for Foreign Policy, Politico and others, and has appeared in renowned media outlets including the BBC, MSNBC and others. His academic papers are published in peer-reviewed journals including the Central Asia Survey and Conflict, Security and Development, Ethnopolitics, and others.

Dr Sharan is a member of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s Asia Strategic Foresight Group to navigate the new geopolitics of Asia and the global order of tomorrow. He has also been an alumnus of the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s prestigious Special Visits Programme, and the US Government’s International Visitor Leadership Programme.

He holds a PhD from the University of Exeter and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge.