Greg is Research Professor in Global Islamic Politics in the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University where he leads research on social inclusion and pluralism, Islam and civil society, democratisation and countering violent extremism.

He is the co-editor of the journal Islam and Christian Muslim Relations and is a Senior Fellow with the UAE-based Hedayah Center in Abu Dhabi working on CVE.  He is one of Australia’s leading scholars of both modern Indonesia and of terrorism and CVE. From 2007 to 2015 he was the Herb Feith Professor at Monash University where he led research on radicalisation in the Global Terrorism Research Centre (GTReC).  He works with AGD, DFAT and AFP and government agencies and community groups in developing responses to the challenge of violent extremism. He also leads a related initiative coordinating a Southeast Asian Regional Network of CSOs working together against violent extremism.

For 28 years he has undertaken extensive research on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam as both a constructive and a disruptive force.  He has been active in the inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state. He also has a strong general interest in international relations, security studies and comparative international politics. Since 2004 he has made a comparative study of progressive Islamic thought in Turkey and Indonesia.

Greg is a frequently interviewed by the Australian and international electronic and print media on Islam, Islamic and Islamist movements around the world and on Indonesia and the politics of the Muslim world.  He is a regular expert guest on ABC TV’s News Breakfast and Sky News Australia and a variety of programs on ABC Radio National, ABC Local Radio, Radio Australia, SBS Radio and SBS TV, Voice of America (Washington), China Radio International (Bejing), BBC radio and television, Hongkong Radio, Radio New Zealand, China Central Television (CCTV), Channel News Asia (Singapore), and commercial radio and TV in Australia, including 3AW, 2GB, 2UE, Channel Seven News, Channel Nine’s Today, and Channel Ten’s The Project.  He also writes opinion pieces for the Melbourne Herald Sun and the Australian Financial Review.

Greg has written or edited seven books and published dozens of refereed articles and book chapters in this field, together with numerous essays, including Abdurrahman Wahid, Muslim Democrat, Indonesian President: a view from the inside, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002; and  Indonesia’s Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the Soul of Islam, Singapore University Press in 2005.  He is currently working on several other book projects: The Key Elements of Countering Violent Extremism (with Matteo Vergani); Countering Violent Extremism and the dynamics of Jihadi terrorism in Southeast Asia; and Islam’s Other Nation: faith in a democratic Indonesia.  His most recent book (with Paul Weller and Ihsan Yilmaz) is The Muslim World and Politics in Transition, Creative Contributions of the Gulen Movement (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).