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April 17: The Recruiters: How Terrorist Groups Find the Right Stuff (for the Wrong Reasons). Prof John Horgan

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Radicalization continues to be addressed in binary (i.e. simplistic) ways, with involvement often considered the product of either “top-down” or “bottom up” processes. Yet these characterizations, and many others like them, have effectively obscured the role of actual recruiters in the process. Even in the smallest of terrorist groups, recruiters continue to be essential for their success, yet, and despite notable exceptions (e.g. Hegghammer, 2013) almost nothing is known about them, or how they do what they do. This presentation addresses a work (and book) in progress, and in doing considers what recruitment looks like at a time when ideological promiscuity permeates terrorism, and social media and artificial intelligence challenge the very notion that recruiters are even relevant. It concludes by addressing what we can learn from the study of recruitment in a variety of non-terrorism contexts.

John Horgan is Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University’s Department of Psychology where he directs the Violent Extremism Research Group (VERG). His latest book, Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from al Qaeda to the Far Right was published by Columbia University Press in 2023.

27 March: Why Negotiate Peace with Paramilitaries? The Case of the Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) 2003-2005. Dr Andrew Thomson

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This talk explores when and why governments negotiate peace and/or demobilization with “pro-state” paramilitary groups/pro-government militia. I argue that governments are more likely to negotiate with paramilitary groups when the government has limited control over paramilitaries, when paramilitaries conduct mass human rights violations, and when the government faces domestic and international pressure to account for paramilitary violence. I build this argument drawing on examples from around the world and then by reviewing the Colombian government’s negotiated agreements with the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) in Santa Fe de Ralito in 2003-2005.
Dr. Andrew Thomson is a Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and a Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. His research focuses pro-government/pro-state militias in civil conflicts and attempts at peace with such actors. His research in these areas has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism among others. Dr. Thomson also leads projects such as the Positive Peace in Northern Ireland: A Northern Irish Peace Index and has recently published a book titled A Short History of the War on Terror.

20 March: The Conversation Media Training. Pat Onoapoi

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Learn how to consider the news potential of your expertise, how to look for story hooks and angles from the news, how to write a quality story pitch to section editors, and other advice. We will explain how The Conversation works, the benefits of writing for the public and how to go about it.

13 March: Stop Cop City and the Future of Direct Action Environmental Justice. Dr Joseph Brown

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The Stop Cop City movement represents a convergence of racial justice, anarchism, and environmentalism. Activists employ a diversity of tactics to halt the construction of an unwanted police training facility, with canvassers, litigators, and civil resistors sharing space with rioters and arsonists. Based on participant observation and dozens of interviews collected in the movement’s forest camps, this paper draws insights about the future of environmental direct action. Ecology is increasingly bound up in currents of racial justice, anticolonialism, and class struggle. Activists turn to direct action for a variety instrumental and philosophical reasons, with the life-or-death nature of social and environmental issues encouraging moderates to accept the radicals in their midst. A study of Stop Cop City exposes the current dynamics of environmental justice and its likely future in a world of stark inequality and climate collapse. Activists may try virtually anything when the struggle is for everything.

28 Feb: Homeland Insecurity: The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law. Prof Conor Gearty

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In the decades following the 9/11 attacks, complex webs of anti-terrorism laws have come into play across the world promising to protect ordinary citizens from bombings, hijackings and other forms of mass violence. But are we really any safer? Has freedom been secured by active deployment of state power, or fatally undermined?

In his recent book, the title of this lecture, Conor Gearty unpacks the history of global anti-terrorism law, explaining not only how these regulations came about, but also the untold damage that he claims they have wrought upon freedom and human rights. Ranging from the age of colonialism to the Cold War, through the perennial crises in the Middle East to the exponential growth of terrorism discourse compressed into the first two decades of the 21st century, the coercion these laws embody is here to stay.

Feb 25: Publishing a PhD manuscript with Bloomsbury, Atifa Jawa

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Aimed at research students and early career researchers in the UK, this talk from Atifa Jiwa, Senior Commissioning Editor in Politics and International Relations, Bloomsbury Academic will provide an overview of things to consider when looking to publish a PhD thesis. The session will provide an outline of the work of Bloomsbury Politics and International Relations; describe what publishers look for in a book and in an author; explain how to go about revising your dissertation for publication; provide tips and hints about how to put together a proposal for a publisher; and go through the publishing process.

CSTPV: Past Present and Future of Terrorism Studies Roundtable III: Next Generation Networks

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To mark the 30th anniversary of the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, the roundtable will provide an opportunity to hear from new researchers at the forefront of their field to explore how questions of interdisciplinarity, ideology, diversity, and technology are shaping current and future research. The roundtable will also discuss the different networks the speakers lead which are designed to support early career researchers and PhD candidates, including the Vox Pol Next Generation Network aimed at those researching online contexts, and the Terrorism and Political Violence Next Generation Network which seeks to support an international community of PhDs and ECRs working in this field.

The Coloniality of the Religious Terrorism Thesis

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In this talk, Rabea Khan discusses the dominant narrative that has produced the so-called Religious Terrorism Thesis, i.e. the popular assumption that terrorism at its worst and most dominant form is always religious. Rabea shows how this dominant narrative about ‘religious terrorism’s’ uniquely dangerous character builds on colonial knowledge and assumptions about ‘religion’ in the first place.

From soldiers to vigilantes: the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association in Northern Ireland on the brink of civil war. Kieran McConaghy, 2024, Irish Political Studies

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This article assesses the importance of an often-ignored vigilante group; the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association. 1969 saw the mobilisation of Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland who had served in the British Army as part of ad-hoc vigilante groups defending nationalist areas. These groups protected Catholic neighbourhoods from loyalist assault and from incursion by the security forces who were increasingly seen as a hostile force. In 1971, this ex-service personnel formed an all-Ireland organisation: the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association. At their peak in the early 1970s, they claimed a membership of 17,000 and an ability to mobilise a further 20,000 in a ‘doomsday scenario’. CESA’s prominence waned by the late 1970s. CESA has received very little academic attention. This article aims to ameliorate that, supplementing the scant secondary literature with newspaper and archival material to account for the emergence of the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association, analysing their importance in shaping the trajectory of the Troubles and saying something of the complexities of identity in the nationalist community in the early period of the conflict.

Case management interventions seeking to counter radicalisation to violence and related forms of violence: A systematic review, James Lewis, Sarah Marsden et al., 2024

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 Increasingly, counter-radicalisation interventions are using case management approaches to structure the delivery of tailored services to those at risk of engaging in, or engaged in, violent extremism. This review sets out the evidence on case management tools and approaches and is made up of two parts with the following objectives.

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