Adrian Guelke

Who is Adrian Guelke?

Adrian Guelke is Professor of Comparative Politics in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was previously Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 1993 to 1995. After attending Diocesan College, Rondebosch, Cape Town, he studied for his BA and MA at the University of Cape Town and his PhD at the London School of Economics. He specialises in the comparative study of ethnic conflict, particularly the cases of Northern Ireland, his native South Africa and Kashmir. He is chair of the International Political Science Association's research committee on politics and ethnicity. And, as of 2013, Editor of the Academic Journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

In 1991 he survived an assassination attempt at his Belfast home. Leon Flores, a member of South African Defence Forces' intelligence branch, doctored a police report that described an academic at Queen's who was known to be involved in the IRA, substituting Guelke's name into the report. Flores then contacted the Ulster Defence Association, who attempted to shoot Guelke. He was saved because the gun used by the would-be assassin jammed. Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack report that "The UDA now acknowledges that it was being used by the South African authorities to take out a political enemy, and that Dr Guelke was innocent of the charge of aiding the IRA".