Mathieu Guidère


Mathieu Guidere is a full professor at the University of Paris 8. A scholar of Linguistics Studies as it applies to radicalization and terrorism, he has held other professorships at institutions including the Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, France and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Guidere is co-founder of the Radicalization Watch Project based in Washington, D.C. and has been awarded a Fulbright Prize in 2006 to advance his research on the psychology of terrorism. He has been also editor-in-chief of the Defense Concepts Journal. In 2015, he was also Team Leader of the European Union CVE program in West Africa and the Sahel Region.
Guidere has published books on the Islamic State and on the Al-Qaeda organization and its activities in North Africa and the Middle East such as "The War of Islamisms", "The Return of the Caliphate" and The New Terrorists and The Al-Qaeda Recruitment Manual. He has also published in English "The Historical Dictionary of Islamic Fundamentalism" and for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point: "The Tribal Allegiance System within AQIM."
Since 2011, Guidere has been a senior fellow at The Brain Sciences Foundation. He was also a lead researcher for MIT Mind Machine Project. His research activities deal with the cognition of terrorism and its psychological stakes particularly as they apply to the protection of civilians and to international law enforcement. He has been regularly interviewed by major international media such as CBS News, France24 English, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Post for his expertise in behavioral sciences as related to radicalisation and terrorism.
During the 1990s, Mathieu Guidère worked on issues surrounding global communications from and to the Arabic language. Afterwards, he published several works including Advertising and Translation, The Multilingual Communication: Market and Institutional Translation, and Iraq in Translation: The Art of Losing a War without Knowing the Language of your Opponent.

Education

Mathieu Guidere's interest in studying the Arab world began while he was a child as he spent his first 18 years in various countries throughout Africa and the Middle East. There, he received both a French and Arabic education. Upon arriving to Paris, he began his advanced studies at the Sorbonne University. There, he studied French literature and Middle Eastern cultures at Bachelor then the Master's level. During this time, he joined the and graduated from there in 1995. Then, in 1997, he received the agrégation degree in Arabic language and culture before obtaining his doctoral degree in linguistics a year later and while preparing a second doctorate in medieval Arab history from Paris-Sorbonne University.
In short, Guidère holds a Ph.D. in linguistics, a master's diploma in French Linguistics and a MA in Arabic Studies, as well as a bachelor's in Middle Eastern Studies and a BA in French literature. He also has an :fr:Habilitation à diriger des recherches|HDR diploma since 2005. His degrees were completed in both French and Arabic. He is fluent in several languages including a dozen of Arabic dialects. Dr. Guidere published books in Arabic, French and English.

Career

After his agrégation degree, Guidere became an associate professor at the Lumière University Lyon 2 in France, where he taught linguistics and translation from 1998 to 2003. After September 11, 2001, the French government made use of his knowledge and Guidere was appointed resident professor by the French Military Academy of Saint-Cyr in 2003. While at this position, he was also the director of the Strategic Information Analysis Laboratory in the academy's research center.
In 2006, he began to study radical groups for the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington D.C.. Then, in 2007, Guidere joined the University of Geneva, where he was a full professor of multilingual monitoring and translation studies.
He is the founder of Predictive Linguistics, an emerging discipline that studies the interrelation between linguistic markers and action considered as an intentional, purposive, conscious and subjectively meaningful activity. He coined the term "predictive linguistics" in 2006 while he was professor at the French Military Academy of Saint-Cyr and director of the Strategic Information Analysis Unit. In 2015, he published a book in French that summarizes his work on predictive linguistics: "La Linguistique predictive: de la cognition à l’action", one of his numerous writings on language and security. Guidere had already previously written many publications discussing the role of linguistic markers in the . Some of these previous publications include “” and the detection of suicide bombing plans through the predictive analysis of suicide bombers’ notes and "testaments" in Les Martyrs d'Al-Qaida.
In 2011, he published the paper "Computational Methods for Clinical Applications: ", in which he also coined the term "”. Soon after, he developed, with Prof. Newton Howard, . By the end of 2012, the field had attracted the attention of many people and started to grow. He has been keynote speaker at the and the organizer of the .
In his books on the psychology of terrorism, Guidere examines, analyzes, evaluates and synthesizes what has been stated in the scientific and professional literature about the etiology of terrorism. He also offers a logical framework and an exploration of the psychodynamics of "Islamist Terrorism" by focusing on the concept of "fanaticism" which carries some implications of mental illness since the fanatic often has fastidious perspective to the world view, which is at the extreme end of a continuum.
In his recent books, he explains the cultural factors of terrorism and argues that violent actions derive from historical, political, and educational parameters. By giving thorough translations of terrorist biographies and case histories, he provides evidences that most major players in a terrorist organization are motivated by political and ideological mobiles often facilitated experiences of injustice, resentment and humiliation.
In "The Return of the Caliphate", Guidere explores the frustration-aggression dynamics of Islamic State militants. He shows that the historical background is a key element to understand the new trends in radicalisation and terrorism. The New Terrorists continues his research and investigates the effects of western foreign policy in the radicalization process of individuals in Western societies. Guidere shows that among terrorists, the themes of perceived injustice and humiliation are dominant. This misperception appears as a possible source of motivation for aggressive actions and, in some cases, a trigger for hardening one's militant ideology.

Selected works