Nafees Hamid is a cognitive scientist of political violence and social fragmentation. He conducts neuroscience, psychology, and qualitative fieldwork with members and supporters of extremist and armed groups. He has conducted face-to-face research with hundreds of members of ISIS, Al Qaida, Hezbollah, IRA, UVF, FARC, ELN, and various strands of white nationalists and Eco-fascists. He is the Co-PI / Research & Policy Director of the XCEPT Research Programme at King’s College London, based out of the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS). This is a multi-million pound behavioural science research programme on pathways to peace versus violence funded by the UK Foreign Office. The research he conducts and leads spans the US, Western Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, South Sudan, and Colombia. His work has informed policies and practices in counter-terrorism; countering violent extremism; strategic communication; Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration; and peace mediation and negotiation practices. He has advised and briefed on these policies and practices to many organisations including the US State and Defense Departments, the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, UK Home Office, UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, the Global Coalition, NATO, USIP, the EU Commission, and the French Prime Minister's office. He helped shape the national strategies for the rehabilitation and reintegration of returning foreign fighters for the countries of Kosovo and Tunisia. His neuroscience research on extremism was cited as the scientific reference point for UK counter-terrorism and countering-violent extremism policy. He speaks and writes widely about his work. He appears and holds bylines at The New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, New York Review of Books, Time Magazine, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Science Channel, VICE, Netflix, and more. His upcoming book "The Extremist Mind" tells his story of conducting the first-ever brain scan studies of extremists.