Professor Rohan Gunaratna (born 1961) is a threat specialist of the global security environment. Professor Gunaratna has over 30 years of academic, policy, and operational experience in national and international security.[1] He is Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore.[2]
He received his master's from the University of Notre Dame in the United States, where he was Hesburgh Scholar and his doctorate from the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom, where he was British Chevening Scholar.[3] A former Senior Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Centre at the United States Military Academy at West Point and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,[4] Gunaratna was invited to testify on the structure of al-Qaeda before the 9/11 Commission.[3]
Gunaratna holds several honorary appointments including as Chairman of the Global Peace Institute, UK; Secretary General of the Consortium for Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CCFT);[5] Member of the Advisory Council, The International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ), Malta; and Member of the Board of Directors, Indo-Pacific Centre, Singapore.[6]
The author of 20 books including Inside al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (University of Columbia Press),[7] Gunaratna edited the Insurgency and Terrorism Series of the Imperial College Press, London.[8] He is a trainer for national security agencies, law enforcement authorities and military counter terrorism units, interviewed terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia and other conflict zones.[9] For advancing international security cooperation, Gunaratna received the Major General Ralph H. Van Deman Award.[10]