Talking Terror

Victor Asal currently serves as Chair of the Department of Public Administration and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also, along with R. Karl Rethemeyer, the co-director of the Project on Violent Conflict. Dr. Asal is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Dr. Asal’s research focuses on the choice of violence by nonstate organizational actors as well as the causes of political discrimination by states against different groups such as sexual minorities, women and ethnic groups. In addition, Prof. Asal has done research on the impact of nuclear proliferation and on the pedagogy of simulations. Asal has been involved in research projects funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, The Department of Homeland Security, The National Science Foundation, and The Office of Naval Research.

Some research that influenced Victor's career.

Martha Crenshaw (1981). The Causes of Terrorism.

Mark Juergensmeyer (2003). Terror in the mind of God: The global rise of religious violence.

Ted Robert Gurr (2000). People vs. states.

Some of Victor's key research

The nature of the beast: Organizational structures and the lethality of terrorist attacks. With R. Karl Rethemeyer (2008)

Gender ideologies and forms of contentious mobilization in the Middle East. With Richard Legault, Ora Szeleky, and Jonathan Wilkenfeld (2013)

A Shot Not Taken: Teaching About the Ethics of Political Violence 1, 2. With Marcus Schulzke (2012)

James Forest is Professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University. He previously served on the faculty of the United States Military Academy (2001-2010), six of those years as Director of Terrorism Studies within the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Dr. Forest has published 20 books and dozens of journal articles, and is co-editor of the international scholarly journal Perspectives on Terrorism.

Research that has influenced his career

Walter Reich (1998), Origins of Terrorism

Bruce Hoffman (1998), Inside Terrorism

Brian Jackson, et al. (2005), Aptitude for Destruction

Some of his Key Publications

Forest, James. J.F. (2015) Essentials of Counterterrorism. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN: 9781440832833

Idler, Annette I. and Forest, James J.F. (2015) “Behavioral Patterns among (Violent) Non-State Actors.” Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 4(1): 2 (January). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.er

Forest, James. J.F. (2013) Intersections of Crime and Terror. London: Routledge. ISBN: 9780415639613.

Mary Beth Altier is a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. Dr. Altier received her PhD from Princeton University and then worked as a postdoc on a project on terrorist disengagement, re-engagement, and recidivism at the Pennsylvania State University. She’s also conducted postdoctoral research on the stability of democracies formed during different wartime settings. Dr. Altier is currently working on a book manuscript based upon her dissertation, which won the American Political Science Association’s Ernst B. Haas Award in 2013. The project examines support for political parties associated with terrorists groups in relatively free and fair elections. She is also the 2015 recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Organized Section on European Politics and Society’s Best Paper Award and has published her work in a number of journals including the Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, and Terrorism and Political Violence.

Research that has influenced Mary Beth's career

Kalyvas, S. (2006) The Logic of Violence in Civil War

Wilkinson, S. (2004) Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India

Rusbult, Caryl (1980) Commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations. Journalof Experimental Psychology

Some of Mary Beth's key Research

Voting for Violence (2011)

Turning Away from Terrorism: Lessons from Psychology, Sociology and Criminology. With Christian N. Thoroughgood and John G. Horgan (2014)

Why They Leave: An Analysis of Terrorist Disengagement Events from Eighty-Seven Autobiographical Accounts. With Emma Leonard Boyle, Neil D. Shortland and John G. Horgan

In today's special episode of Talking Terror John Morrison speaks to the Guardian journalist Jason Burke. In the discussion they talk about Jason's journalistic career which has seen him become one of the world leading experts on Islamic militancy, and Al Qaeda and IS specifically. While the chat focuses on his journalistic career broadly it primarily focuses on his books:

Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam,

Al Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror,

On the Road to Kandahar: Travels Through Conflict in the Islamic World,

The 9/11 Wars, and

The New Threat: The Past, Present, and Future of Islamic Militancy

Mia Bloom is Professor of Communication at Georgia State University. She conducts ethnographic field research in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia and speaks eight languages. She has authored several books and articles on terrorism and violent extremism including Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (2005), Living Together After Ethnic Killing [with Roy Licklider] (2007) and Bombshell: Women and Terror (2011). She is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held research or teaching appointments at Princeton, Cornell, Harvard and McGill Universities.

Under the auspices of the Minerva Research Initiative (MRI) of Department of Defense, Bloom is currently conducting research with John G. Horgan on how children become involved in terrorist organizations. Bloom and Horgan’s findings will be published in a book for Cornell University Press entitled Small Arms: Children and Terror (2016). Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, a Masters in Arab Studies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Bachelors from McGill University in Russian, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

Research that Influenced Mia

Albert Bandura Moral Disengagement

David Rapoport Fear and Trembling

Claire Sterling, The Terror Network

Mia's key Research

Dying to Kill

Bombshell

Small Arms

In this special episode of Talking Terror John talks to Hugo Rosemont, the Director of Security and Resilience Sector at the ADS Group, and Ross Frenett the co-director and co-founder of Moonshot CVE. Their discussion looks at the role that the private sector has to play in both countering violent extremism and countering terrorism. Within this they talk about the advantages and disadvantages the private sector has in this role, and how it can work best with the public sector, and specifically academia.

Thomas Hegghammer: Jihadi Culture by John F. Morrison

In this second part of the Boko Haram special episode John talks to Hilary Matfess about the role which women play in Boko Haram. It assesses their role within the group as well as as targets of Boko Haram. This discussion is largely based around her recent book 'Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses' published by Zed books.

Dr Katherine E Brown is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at University of Birmingham, specialising in gender, jihad and counter-terrorism. Her research examines Muslim women's involvement in political violence, the role of gender in jihadist ideology, and the gendered impact of counter-terrorism policies and practices worldwide. This work engages directly with public debates on security, religion, and women's rights. She has published widely and is currently working on a monograph on anti-radicalization policies and gender. She is the Series Editor for the newly launched Routledge Focus Monograph Series: “Islam in Europe”. She is a member of the Muslim in Britain's Research Network and the UK Higher Education Academy's Islamic Studies Network. She is a lead academic board member of the European Union Radicalisation Awareness Network, run for practitioners in this field. Her expertise has also been sought by a number of academic, policy, government, and media outlets, in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Norway, and Austria. Including, for example, the 9/11 Memorial, the UN, and the European Parliament. In 2017 – 2018 she is consulting for UN Women on gender mainstreaming in countering violent extremism programmes. Recently she has given expert advice and testimony in the UK in a number of cases involving radicalisation.

Research that has influenced Katherine's career

Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry (2007) Mothers Monsters Whores

Talal Asad (1993) Genealogies of Religion

Saba Mahmood (2004) Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the feminist subject

Some of Katherine's key research

ISIS as a Proto-State (forthcoming, 2018)

Gender and Anti-Radicalization: women and emerging counter-terrorism measures (2012)

Marginality as a Feminist Research Method in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (2015)

This is the first in a two part episode looking at the West African terrorist group Boko Haram. In this episode John talks to David Otto, the Director of TGS Intelligence and Security Consultants. Within the chat they discuss the history and origins of Boko Haram, the group's links with ISIS and the counter-terrorist efforts which have taken place locally, nationally, regionally and internationally.