Michael Shkolnik

Background

About Michael Shkolnik

Michael Shkolnik is the senior analyst and head of the Middle East Integrated Mission Group in the Canadian foreign ministry’s international security branch, regularly providing strategic assessments for senior officials including Cabinet Ministers. Over the past two years, he has briefed decision-makers over 400 times during global crises including the ongoing Middle East war and several armed conflicts in Africa and the South Caucasus. In 2024, Michael was selected to represent Canada in the McCain Institute’s National Security and Counterterrorism Fellowship focused on strengthening collaboration among Five Eyes partner nations. Michael is also an adjunct professor at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA), providing verbal briefing training and teaching graduate-level seminars on terrorism, international security, and armed conflict analysis based on his academic research and government experience. Through Canada's Recruitment of Policy Leaders program, Michael worked on counterterrorism and multinational stabilization operations with the Department of National Defence’s Middle East and Africa Division from 2019-21. Previously, Michael was awarded the Cadieux-Léger Fellowship (a unique scholar-in-residence program) with the foreign ministry’s strategic foresight unit and advised the strategic foreign policy bureau on Salafi-jihadist organizations during the rise of the Islamic State group (2015-18). In 2020, Michael completed a Ph.D. at NPSIA with distinction and wrote a dissertation on the evolution of militant groups into full-fledged insurgencies—which the Terrorism Research Initiative awarded the "Best Doctoral Dissertation on Terrorism or Counter-Terrorism published in 2019 & 2020." His research is published in leading academic and policy-oriented outlets, including Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Combatting Terrorism Center (CTC) Sentinel, Terrorism and Political Violence, War on the Rocks, and Perspectives on Terrorism. Throughout his career, he has also consulted for various international security and terrorism research institutes in Washington D.C, Ottawa, and Israel. Michael graduated magna cum laude with a master’s degree in Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security Studies (2010) from Israel’s Reichman University.