Dr. Zahid Shahab Ahmed

GRM 2026 Workshop: Gulf–South Asia Relations in an Era of Deepening Interdependence

Associate Professor of Security and Strategic Studies at the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi, UAE Security and Strategic Studies Associate Professor of Security and Strategic Studies at the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi, UAE

Dr. Zahid Shahab Ahmed is an Associate Professor of Security and Strategic Studies at the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He also serves as a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. From 2016 to 2023, he was a Senior Research Fellow at Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Deakin University, Australia. Between 2017 and 2019, he was a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy. Prior to that, from 2013 to 2016, he worked as an Assistant Professor at the Centre for International Peace and Stability, National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan. Dr. Ahmed specializes in peace and security studies in South Asia and the Middle East. He has published extensively in leading journals such as Politics and Religion, Democratization, Asian Studies Review, and Territory, Politics, Governance. He is the author of Regionalism and Regional Security in South Asia: The Role of SAARC (Routledge, 2013), and the lead author of Iran’s Soft Power in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).