Paul Amar, Professor in the Global Studies Department at the University of California Santa Barbara and Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, is a political scientist and  anthropologist with affiliate appointments in Feminist Studies,  Sociology, Comparative Literature, Middle East Studies, and Latin  American & Iberian Studies. Before he began his academic career, he worked as a journalist in Cairo, a police reformer and sexuality rights activist in Rio de Janeiro, and as a conflict-resolution and economic development  specialist at the United Nations. His books include: Cairo Cosmopolitan (2006); New Racial Missions of Policing (2010); Global South to the Rescue (2011); Dispatches from the Arab Spring (2013);  and The Middle East and Brazil (2014).

His book, "The Security Archipelago" was awarded the Charles Taylor  Award for "Best Book of the Year" in 2014 by the Interpretive Methods  Section of the American Political Science Association.