Ranj Alaaldin is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. He specialises in the modern history of the Middle East and advises on regional and local trends in politics, energy and security. Alaaldin's current research focus is on the so-called Islamic State, Western foreign policy, violent non-state actors and sectarian conflict. Alaaldin worked on the law of armed conflict and the use of force, under the supervision of Judge Christopher Greenwood of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He was previously a visiting scholar at Columbia University and has worked on conflict resolution and institution-building in the Middle East with the Next Century Foundation, a Track II diplomacy organisation. He led election-monitoring teams in Iraq between 2009-2014 as well as a fact-finding mission to Libya during the 2011 uprising.