Negah Angha is a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where her doctoral research explores the Sufi ethical practices of adab (ethical self-discipline) and khedmat (service) and their role in fostering social harmony and peacebuilding within and beyond Muslim communities. Her ethnographic work spans Germany and Morocco, examining how Sufi communities cultivate interfaith cooperation and civic engagement through lived spiritual practice. Her research contributes to the field of international relations by highlighting the relational ethics of Sufism as actionable resources for building a more just and pluralistic peace.

Negah brings two decades of experience in international affairs, advising leadership at the U.S. Department of State and the White House National Security Council on strategic communications, diplomacy, and policy design. From 2021 to 2022, she served as Director for Multilateral Initiatives at the National Security Council, where she led the Biden-Harris Administration’s Summit for Democracy. She later became Director for Partnerships and Global Engagement, coordinating U.S. government outreach to business, diaspora, think tank, trade union, and academic communities. Her prior experience also includes working with The Cohen Group, where she advised global companies on navigating geopolitical and policy challenges across a wide range of industries.

Her academic and policy insights have been featured across major media platforms including BBC World Service, The Times Radio, Monocle Radio, Sky TV, LBC, and Voice of America. She regularly delivers analysis on U.S. foreign policy, national security, and Middle East and North Africa affairs, helping to inform both public and policy audiences.

Negah has held academic and policy fellowships with leading institutions, including as a 2023 Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative (2022–2024), and as a Global Fellow with the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program (2025). She has also served as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at King’s College London and the UK Defence Academy Joint Services Command and Staff College (2019–2020), and as a senior editor for Strife Journal (2019).

She co-founded and co-convened the Middle East & North Africa Research Group at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College London from 2019 to 2020, helping to foster academic collaboration and cross-regional dialogue. In that role, she co-organised and developed the first in a three-part academic conference series, “Navigating North Africa in 2020: Dominating Narratives and New Perspectives,” held on 6 October 2020.

In recognition of her leadership, she was named to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Diversity in National Security Network U.S. National Security and Foreign Affairs Leadership List in both 2022 and 2023. In March 2025, she was appointed to the Board of Every Casualty Counts, a non-profit organisation focused on the documentation of civilian harm in conflict.

Doctoral Research

Sufi Faith, Practice, and Social Harmony: Case Studies of Morocco and Germany

Research Interests

Ethics; religion, conflict and peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa; intercultural and interfaith dialogue in global affairs; role of the diaspora; foreign policy and diplomacy; anthropology of Islam; sociology of Islam; Sufism; Morocco; Iran.

Supervisors

• Dr Stacey Gutkowski.
• Dr Daniel DeHanas.