Discussions of researcher safety often construct the impacts of researching harmful communities or extremist groups as universal, experienced the same way by different researchers. However, who we are influences the risks we are likely to experience in our research. Drawing on personal experiences of researching male supremacist communities as a queer woman and ‘visible’ incel researcher, this talk highlights the dynamic elements of risk and safety, inherently shaped by individual subjectivities, vulnerabilities, and career stages.
About the speaker:
Allysa is a Research Fellow in AI Trust and Security whose research sits at the intersections of technology, extremism, and online harms. Her existing work has explored the role manosphere-affiliated communities play in (re)producing male supremacism and misogynist extremism in online environments. Her doctoral research traced the narratives present in the stories posted to several high-profile incel forums, with the aim of uncovering how these stories help legitimise instances of identity-based harm and provide additional knowledge about the pathways into and out of inceldom. She’s also interested in understanding how Generative AI can both create and exacerbate online harms, exploring how text- and image-based outputs (re)produce existing structural injustices underpinning hate-based victimisation. Her current research investigates how feminised AI companion apps (specifically those used by cisgender heterosexual men for intimate or romantic relationships) contribute to male supremacist harms, and seeks to uncover whether responsible, human-centred designs might promote expressions of healthy masculinities in human-AI interactions.
Her work has been featured in GNET Insights, CREST Security Reviews, Tech Against Terrorism, and the International Risk Podcast. A critical review of incel-focused research from her doctoral work was recently published in Crime, Media, Culture (2024), with additional publications forthcoming in a special issue of Critical Discourse Studies (2025), the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Violence (2026), Researching Hate (2026), and the Routledge Companion to Media, Sex, and Sexuality (2027).