Introduction

Holder of a Masters in International Relations and PhD in Political Science from Boston University, Dr. Moeed Yusuf is currently serving as the Director of South Asia programmes at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). He has

Dr. Moeed Yusuf


Professional Achievements

Holder of a Masters in International Relations and PhD in Political Science from Boston University, Dr. Moeed Yusuf is currently serving as the Director of South Asia programmes at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). He has been engaged in expanding USIP’s work on Pakistan/South Asia since 2010. His current research focuses on youth and democratic institutions in Pakistan, policy options to mitigate militancy in Pakistan and the South Asian region in general, and U.S. role in South Asian crisis management.

Before joining USIP, Dr. Moeed Yusuf was a research fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Centre for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University’s Political Science Department, and concurrently a research fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center at Harvard Kennedy School. He has also worked at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. Moeed Yusuf has taught in Boston University's Political Science and International Relations Departments as a senior teaching fellow in 2009. He lectures regularly at the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute and has also lectured at the Pakistan Military Staff College and at NATO’s Centre of Excellence-Defence against terrorism in Ankara, Turkey.

Dr. Moeed Yusuf had previously taught courses on political economy and defence economics at the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University, Pakistan. He writes a weekly column in The Friday Times, Pakistan’s leading English weekly paper. He has served as a member of number of advisory groups in Pakistan including the working group on poverty for Pakistan’s Medium Term Development Framework.

In 2007, he co-founded Strategic and Economic Policy Research, a private sector consultancy firm in Pakistan. Yusuf has also consulted for a number of Pakistani and the Stockholm Policy Research Institute, among others. From 2004-2007, he was a full-time consultant with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan’s premier development-sector think tank.

He is also a Research Fellow at Strategic and Economic Policy Research, Pakistan and a visiting Associate at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan. Most recently, he was based at the Brookings Institution as a Special Guest researcher.

His research focuses on strategic concerns related to South Asia, especially those falling within the ambit of Pakistan and India’s security policy, the political economy of democratic transitions in Pakistan, as well as developmental issues related to South Asian trade and poverty. He is currently engaged in authoring a compilation on Pakistan’s security and political environment.

He has published widely in national and international journals, professional publications and magazines. He writes regularly for Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English daily. He also frequently appears as an expert on U.S. and Pakistani media. His latest books South Asia 2060: Envisioning Regional Futures (Adil Najam and Moeed Yusuf, eds.) and ‘Getting it Right in Afghanistan’ (Scott Smith, Moeed Yusuf, and Colin Cookman, eds.) were published by Anthem Press, UK and U.S. Institute of Peace Press respectively in 2013.

He is also the editor of Pakistan's Counter-terrorism Challenge (Georgetown University Press, 2014) and Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in South Asia: From a Peacebuilding Lens (U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2014).

Dr. Moeed Yusuf has served on a number of important task forces, advisory councils, working groups, and governing boards, both in the U.S. and Pakistan. In 2013, he was selected to Nobel laureate, Pugwash International’s ‘Council’ (governing body) and subsequently became the youngest member ever to be included in its global executive committee to serve a six-year term.