Mechelen, Flemish Region, Belgium
Historian & Arabist PhD Candidate Civil servant at Belgium Defence Visiting Fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy
Researching and writing about international Jihad with a focus on the Syrian conflict and its foreign fighters Visiting Fellow at The European Foundation for Democracy Member of the Editorial Board of The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) Currently working on an ontology of Arabic terminology used in Jihadi literature in cooperation with textgain Twitter: @p_vanostaeyen Website: pietervanostaeyen.com Guest speaker at : European Commission, European Policy Center, PISM, ... Co-author of ISIS Incubators: The Emergence of Salafi Jihadism in Europe, published November 2014 http://e.org/book/isis-incubators/ http://www.almesbar.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/094.pdf Author: Author and editor : pietervanostaeyen.com Contributed to: www.jihadology.net and www.bellingcat.org First book: Van Kruistochten tot Kalifaat, published May 2015 by Pelckmans Second edition: Staat van Terreur, de Jihadistische Revolutie, published by Polis, June 2016 BBC : Why have IS jihadists targeted belgium? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35882372 Occasional guest speaker for European Policy Centre (EPC) http://www.epc.eu/index.php Contributor to the The Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and NATO's The Science for Peace and Security Programme conference on foreign fighters (May 18-20, 2016 Chisinau, Moldova) Guest author at European Policy Centre (EPC) http://www.epc.eu/pub_details.php?cat_id=4&pub_id=6629 Guest author at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, USA https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/belgian-radical-networks-and-the-road-to-the-brussels-attacks see list of publications and lectures.
PhD candidate at KU Leuven Publications in chronological order ISIS Incubators: The Emergence of Salafi Jihadism in Europe November 2014 el-Mesbar books (contributor) Van Kruistochten tot Kalifaat May 19, 2015 Pelckmans Staat van Terreur. De Jihadistische Revolutie May 2016 Polis The fall-out from the Brussels terrorist attacks Jun 15, 2016 European Policy Center Belgian Radical Networks and the Road to the Brussels Attacks Jun 16, 2016 Combating Terrorism Center at West Point The Role of Belgian Fighters in the Jihadification of The Syrian War Mar 1, 2017 European Foundation for Democracy Belgian Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq Jun 1, 2017 PISM / NATO (contributor)
Monitoring the activities of Jihadi groups (The Islamic State and al-Qaeda) throughout the Sahel on a daily basis