Research areas

Primary research areas

Mona Kanwal Sheikh's main expertise is militant Islamist movements, especially those linked to the Pakistani Taliban. Her research focuses on religious legitimizations of, and mobilization for, violence. Sheikh also deals more broadly with the dynamics of transnational jihad, including Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Theoretically, Sheikh has helped develop a sociotheological approach to the study of religious violence, and contributed to the securitization theory's conceptualization of religion.

Current research

Mona Kanwal Sheikh is an expert on the Pakistani Taliban movement. Her current research focuses on the dynamics behind the transnationalization of jihad, and containment mechanisms, including the question of negotiating with jihadist actors. Empirically her focus is on the Pakistani Taliban, jihadi militancy in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in South Asia.

Theoretical contribution

Through her scholarship Sheikh has contributed to the theoretical debate on religious violence and the concepts of religion and secularism in IR, pushing for a more inclusive analytical apparatus embracing non-western perspectives. Part of her work speaks to the broadening of securitization theory to the non-west, including its application to the study of islamist movements. Recently, she has also developed the framework of sociotheology and worldview analysis in order to bridge theological and sociological perspectives on religio-political activism, and to enhance methodological sensitivity in the study of religious extremism and the “radical other.”

Visiting scholarship

Sheikh has been appointed a visiting research scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara (2008-9, 2013-14), the Center for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley (2014) and has during her research period also been hosted by the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (2008), University of Notre Dame. Additionally, she has been affiliated to the project “Resolving Jihadist Conflicts? Religion, Civil War, and Prospects for Peace” hosted by the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University (2018-).

Awards

Sheikh has been awarded two prestigious elite research prizes (2007, 2012) for her work on the Pakistani Taliban by the Danish Ministry of Science. Her book “Guardians of God – Inside the Religious Mind of the Pakistani Taliban” (Oxford University Press, 2016) received the honorary award by the Book Award Committee of the International Studies Association's Religion and International Studies Section in 2018. Subheading In 2017 she was also nominated for the Elite research prize of the Danish Ministry of Science and Research, and in 2012, she was nominated for the Royal Danish Academy’s silver medal for young researchers.

In 2018 she was awarded an ERC starting grant to head a multi-disciplinary team of researchers examining the dynamics behind the transnationalization of jihad and developing novel ways of thinking about the containment of transnationalized conflicts.