James Barnett

James Barnett is a research fellow at Hudson Institute, where he studies conflict, terrorism, and geopolitics in Africa. He has extensive fieldwork experience, including in conflict environments across Nigeria and in Somalia, South Sudan, and Ukraine.

Mr. Barnett is also a research fellow with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) in Abuja, Nigeria, and in 2021 he was a Fulbright research fellow at the University of Lagos for nine months. Additionally, in 2023, he served as a long-term analyst on the International Republican Institute-National Democratic Institute international election observation mission to Nigeria. Prior to joining Hudson, he held research or analyst positions with the United States Institute of Peace, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project. He was also a 2016–17 Boren Scholar in Tanzania.

His writing has appeared in publications such as Foreign Policy, New Lines Magazine, War on the Rocks, African Arguments, and the Los Angeles Review of Books as well as research journals such as West Point’s CTC Sentinel. Along with Hudson fellows Eric Brown, Hillel Fradkin, and Husain Haqqani, he is an editor of Hudson Institute’s journal Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. He has also been interviewed by Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera, Asharq, BBC News, Le Monde, Premium Times, and Voice of America, and he has testified before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Mr. Barnett holds a BA with highest honors in history and Plan II from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA with distinction in war studies from King’s College London. He speaks Swahili, Arabic, and Spanish.