Talking Terror

In the first episode of Series 2 of Talking Terror (now sponsored by IB Tauris) John talks to Sinead O'Shea about her documentary 'A Mother Brings Her Son To Get Shot.' This documentary focuses on a mother's decision to bring her son to get shot by violent 'dissident' Irish Republicans. This discussion focuses on numerous key aspects of the documentary including the surprising role that humour plays within the film. For anyone who wants to see a screening of the movie there is a screening in the Curzon cinema in London on March 13th with some tickets still available.

For more information about Talking Terror be sure to follow @terror_podcast and morrison_jf on Twitter. Also if you are interested in doing an MSc in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies there is a new programme being launched at Royal Holloway, University of London in September 2019. All information can be found at rhul.ac.uk

Anthony’s research focus has been on conceptualizing terrorism, UK counter-terrorism strategy, radicalization and extremism. He has also published on a wide range of other terrorist related themes including British public and Muslim attitudes towards both terrorism and counter-terrorism, homeland security, terrorism in Northern Ireland, and terrorism and sport (he was the lead editor for the volume Terrorism and the Olympics: Major event security and lessons for the future, Routledge, 2011). His book on Conceptualizing Terrorism was published with Oxford University Press in September 2015 and was nominated (by OUP) for the Political Studies Association’s best political science book of the year award (the W.J.M. Mackenzie prize). He has presented to a wide range of academic and policymaking audiences and has contributed to briefings on terrorism and radicalization at the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He spoke at the National Security Summit in October 2015 and he convened a panel of experts and academics to discuss ‘Interpretations of terrorism, radicalisation and extremism’ at British International Studies Association’s 2015 annual conference. He was also recently invited by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to submit input for an OHCHR report on Countering and Preventing Violent Extremism.

Some research that has influenced Anthony's career

Martha Crenshaw (2011) Explaining terrorism, causes, processes and consequences

Walter Reich (1990). Origins of terrorism: Psychologies, ideologies, theologies, states of mind.

Alex Schmid (2004) Terrorism – The Definitional Problem

Some of Anthony's key research.

Conceptualizing terrorism (2015)

From terrorism to ‘radicalization’ to ‘extremism’: counterterrorism imperative or loss of focus? (2015)

The problem with ‘radicalization’, the remit of ‘Prevent’, and the need to refocus on terrorism in the UK (2011)

Peter Neumann is a Professor of Security Studies at the War Studies Department, and serve as Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR, www.icsr.info ), which he founded in early 2008.

He has authored or co-authored five books, including Old and New Terrorism, published by Polity Press in 2009; and The Strategy of Terrorism (with MLR Smith), published by Routledge in 2008. He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles, dealing with different aspects of terrorism and radicalization, especially ‘homegrown’ radicalization in Western countries. Shorter articles and opinion pieces have appeared in, among others, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the International Herald Tribune.

He has taught courses on terrorism, counterterrorism, intelligence, radicalization and counter-radicalization at King's College London and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he continues to serve as adjunct professor.

He holds an MA in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin, and a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. Before becoming an academic, he worked as a radio journalist in Germany.

Research that influenced Peter:

Marc Sageman Understanding Terror Networks

Quentin Wiktorowicz's Radical Islam Rising

William Zellner Counter-cultures

Peter's own Research:

Radicalised

Criminal Pasts, Terrorist Futures with Rajan Basra

Donald Trump's War on Terror (forthcoming)

Dr. Dawson is a Full Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies and the Department of Religious Studies. He has served as the Chair of both departments. He has published three books, four edited books, and sixty-nine academic articles and book chapters. Until 2008 most of his research was in the sociology of religion, in particular the study of new religious movements. Since then terrorism has become the primary focus of his research, in particular the process of radicalization leading to violence. In 2012 he co-founded the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS). He is the current Project Director (see www.tsas.ca) of this partnership. TSAS operates with funds competitively awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Public Safety Canada, Defence Research and Development Canada, and other organizations. Dr. Dawson regularly makes invited presentations to a wide variety of government, academic, and public groups about various aspects of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and is frequently interviewed by the media on these topics. He also has been involved in the supervision of over thirty PhD students.

Three of Lorne's publications:

Lorne L. Dawson, “Discounting Religion in the Explanation of Homegrown Terrorism: A Critique,” in James R. Lewis, ed., Cambridge Companion to Religion and Terrorism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017: 32-45.

Lorne L. Dawson, “Sketch of a Social Ecology Model for Explaining Homegrown Terrorist Radicalisation,” The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague 8, no.1 2017. DOI: 10.19165/2017.1.01.

Lorne L. Dawson and Amarnath Amarasingam, “Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2017: 191-210. DOI 10.1080/1057610X.2016.1274216.

Three publications that influenced Lorne:

Martha Crenshaw, “The Subjective Reality of the Terrorist: Ideological and Psychological Factors in Terrorism.” In Robert O. Slater and Michael Stohl, eds., Current Perspectives on International Terrorism. London: Macmillan Press, 1988: 12-46.

Quinton Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising: Muslim Extremism in the West. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

Simon Cotteem and Keith Hayward, “Terrorist (E)motives: The Existential Attractions of Terrorism.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 34 (12), 2011: 963-986.

Paul Taylor is a Professor of Psychology at Lancaster University, Professor of Human Interaction at Twente University, and director of the Centre for Evidence and Research on Security Threats (CREST).

He is interested in how people cooperate. Using experimental, archival and field research, he has studied both the fundamental behavioral and cognitive procsses that make human interaction possible and, more practically, the kinds of tactics and policies that promote peaceful resolutions.

Research that Influenced Paul

Abbott, A. (2001). Time matters: On theory and method. Chicago Press.

Canter, D. V., and Heritage, R. (1990). A multivariate model of sexual offence behaviour: developments in offender profiling. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 1, 185-212.

King, G. (1997). A solution to the ecological inference problem: Reconstructing individual behavior from aggregate data. Princetown University Press.

Paul's Own Key Research

Donohue, W. A., & Taylor, P. J. (2003). Testing the role effect in terrorist negotiations. International Negotiation, 8, 527-547.

Jacques, K., & Taylor, P. J. (2013). Myths and realities of female-perpetrated terrorism. Law and Human Behavior, 37, 35-44.

Prentice, S., Taylor, P. J., Rayson, P., Hoskins, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2011). Analyzing the semantic content and persuasive composition of extremist media: A case study of texts produced during the Gaza conflict. Information Systems Frontiers, 13, 61-73.

Taylor, P. J., Jacques, K., Giebels, E., Levine, M., Best, R., Winter, J., & Rossi, G. (2008). Analysing forensic processes: Taking time into account. Issues in Forensic Psychology, 8, 45-57.

Julie Chernov Hwang is an associate professor of political science and international relations in the Center for People, Politics and Markets at Goucher College. She is the author of Why Terrorists Quit: The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists, published by Cornell University Press in 2018; Peaceful Islamist Mobilization in the Muslim World: What Went Right, published by Palgrave Press in 2009; and the co-editor of Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World, published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2014. Her articles have been published in Terrorism and Political Violence, Asian Survey, Asia-Pacific Issues, Southeast Asia Research, and Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. Her special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence, entitled “Pathways into Terrorism: Understanding Entry and Support for Terrorism in Asia,” is forthcoming in 2018. Her new research project examines the pathways to entry into Southeast Asian Islamist extremist groups.

Research that has influenced Julie

1. Tore Bjorgo. “Processes of Disengagement from Violent Groups on the Extreme Right.” In Leaving Terrorism Behind. Eds. Tore Bjorgo and John Horgan. London: Routledge. 2009.

2. John Horgan. Walking Away from Terrorism: Accounts of Disengagement from Radical and Extremist Movements. London: Routledge. 2009.

3. Solahudin. Roots of Indonesian Terrorism. Ithaca: Cornell. 2013.

4. Daniel Koehler. Understanding Deradicalization. London: Routledge. 2017

Some of Julie’s Own Research:

1. Julie Chernov Hwang. Why Terrorists Quit: The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2018.

2. Julie Chernov Hwang and Kirsten Schulze, “Why They Join: Pathways into Indonesian Jihadist Organizations.” in Pathways into Terrorism: Understanding Entry and Support for Terrorism in Asia. Special issue of Terrorism and Political Violence. Ed. Julie Chernov Hwang. Forthcoming 2018.

3. Julie Chernov Hwang. "The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists: Understanding the Pathways Terrorism and Political Violence. 29: 2 (2017)

Aaron Winter holds a DPhil from Sussex, where his dissertation was on the far-right in post-civil rights America. He is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at UEL. His research is on right-wing extremism and terrorism, hate groups and hate crime, and racist and racialised violence. He has been interviewed by the BBC, CBC, LBC, The Times, The Telegraph, Vice and Gara. He is co-editor of Discourses and Practices of Terrorism: Interrogating Terror (2010), New Challenges for the EU Internal Security Strategy (2013) and Reflexivity in Criminological Research Experiences with the Powerful and the Powerless (2014). His most recent article is ‘Articulations of Islamophobia: From the Extreme to the Mainstream?’ in Ethnic and Racial Studies (co-authored with Aurelien Mondon). He is currently co-editing the books: Historical Perspectives on Organised Crime and Terrorism and Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method, Practice, as well as the Manchester University Press Series Racism, Resistance and Social Change. He is also part of the ESRC project Racism and Political Mobilisation and London Scholars project Step Up To Stop Hate.Aaron is also a Trustee of the British Sociological Association.

Some research that has influenced Aaron's career

Jessie Daniels (2016), White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse

Chip Berlet and Mathew Lyons (2000), Right-Wing Populism inAmerica: Too Close for Comfort

Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement by David Chalmers

Some of Aaron's key research

Anti-Abortion Extremism and Violence in the US (2013)

My Enemies Must Be Friends: The American Extreme Right, Conspiracy Theory, Islam and the MiddleEast (2014)

Articulations of Islamophobia: From the Extreme to the Mainstream?’ (2018)

Counter-Terrorism in the USA Prior to 9/11 (Forthcoming 2018)

Joshua D. Freilich is a member of the Criminal Justice Department at John Jay College. He is the Creator and co-Director of the United States Extremist Crime Database, an open source relational database of crimes committed by political extremists in the U.S. Freilich is the Vice Chair of the American Society of Criminology's Division on Terrorism & Bias Crimes. He has been a member of START (a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center of Excellence) since 2006 and on its executive committee since 2010. Freilich is on the GTD’s advisory board and his research has been funded by DHS and the National Institute of Justice. His terrorism research focuses on the causes of and responses to terrorism. Recent works have looked at county-level variation in extremist violence, and the efficacy of interventions to counter this violence. Freilich’s other research looks at bias crimes, measurement issues, and environmental criminology and crime prevention.

Some research that has influenced Joshua's career

Ronald V. Clarke, R.V. & Graeme R. Newman (2006). Outsmarting the terrorists.

Gary LaFree, G. & Laura Dugan (2007). Introducing the Global Terrorism Database.

Brent L. Smith. (1994). Terrorism in America: Pipe bombs and pipe dreams.

Some of Joshua's key research

Comparing extremist perpetrators of suicide and non-suicideattacks in the United States. With William S. Parkin, Jeff Gruenewald and Steven M. Chermak (In press)

The future of terrorism research: A review essay. With Steven M. Chermak and Jeff Gruenewald (2015)

Investigating the applicability of macro-level criminology theory to terrorism: A county-level analysis. With Amy Adamczyk, Steven M. Chermak, Katharine Boyd and

William S. Parkin (2015).

Introducing the United States Extremist Crime Database(ECDB). With Steven M. Chermak, Roberta Belli, Jeff Gruenewald and

William S. Parkin (2014).

Maura Conway is a Professor of International Security in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University (DCU) in Dublin, Ireland and Coordinator of VOX-Pol (voxpol.eu), a EU-funded project on violent online political extremism (voxpol.eu). Her principal research interests are in the area of terrorism and the Internet, including academic and media discourses on cyberterrorism, the functioning and effectiveness of violent political extremist online content, and violent online radicalisation. She is the author of over 40 articles and chapters in my specialist area(s). Maura's research has appeared in, among others, Current History, Media, War & Conflict, Parliamentary Affairs, and Social Science Computer Review. She has presented findings before the United Nations in New York, the Commission of the European Union in Brussels, the Club de Madrid, and elsewhere

Dr. Tore Bjørgo (born 1958) is professor at the University of Oslo and Director at “Center for Research on Extremism: Right-Wing Extremism, Hate Crime and Political Violence” (C‑REX). He is also Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Police University College (PHS), where he has been Professor of Police Science (since 2004) and Research Director (2005-2007). Until the end of 2015, he was an adjunct research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), where he was a (senior) research fellow from 1998 until 2004. He has also been a research associate at Leiden University (1991-1997). Since 2002, he has been coordinator of the Norwegian Consortium for Research on Terrorism and International Crime. During autumn 2014, he was a Fulbright scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He received his doctoral degree in Social Science from the University of Leiden in 1997 on the basis of a dissertation on racist and right-wing violence in Scandinavia. For his Cand. Polit degree in social anthropology (University of Oslo 1987) he did 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 1984, based in Jerusalem.

His research has covered a broad range of topics, often in combinations: political violence/terrorism, racism/right-wing extremism, deradicalisation and disengagement, criminal gangs and subcultures, crime prevention/counter-terrorism, police science, conflicts in the Middle East, and political communication.

Research that has Influenced Tore

Umberto Eco: Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984) / Name of the Rose (1980) (the second illustrates his semiotic theory in the format of a crime novel)

Alex P. Schmid and Janni de Graaf (1982): Violence as Communication: Insurgent terrorism and the Western news media

Helmut Willems (1993): Fremdenfeindlische Gewalt: Einstellungen, Täter, Konflikteskalation

Some of Tore's Key Research:

Leaving Terrorism Behind: individual and Collective disengagement (2009, with John Horgan)

Strategies for Preventing Terrorism / Preventing Crime (2013/2016)

Vigilantism against Migrants and Minorities (an ongoing book project