Conflict, Violence and Terrorism Research Centre (CVTRC)

The Conflict, Violence and Terrorism Research Centre (CVTRC) at Royal Holloway aims to carry out inter-disciplinary, and methodologically rigorous, research on conflict, violence and terrorism. The CVTRC’s research focuses upon the act of violence itself; the motivations and rationale of violent actor(s); the contemporary and historical contexts in which violence takes place; violent spaces; the antecedents of violence; the social, political and other consequences of violence; representations of violence in news media, film, and literature; memories of violence and commemoration; and conflict resolution and peace-building efforts.

This inter-disciplinary approach is reflected in the academic backgrounds of the Centre Research Fellows who hail from a range of disciplines including History, Law, Terrorism Studies, Politics, International Relations, Economics, Geography, and Psychology.

The principle aims of the centre include:

To carry out innovative inter-disciplinary research on violence, conflict and terrorism.
To host conferences, symposia, workshops and guest speaker events.
To serve as a hub to attract grant funding.
To provide an intellectual home to the growing cohort of PGT and PGR students studying conflict and terrorism. These include the newly launched MSc Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (Law); new MA History: Histories of Conflict and Violence pathway (History); the MSc. in International Security (PIR), in addition to the numerous PhD and MRes students supervised on these topics across RHUL.
To attract new cross-college PhD students.
To serve as a hub for engaging with policymakers, practitioners, and publics.

Staff

Director

Dr Akil Awan

Awan’s research interests are focused around the history of terrorism, radicalization, social movements, protest, religion, gender, and new media. He has written widely in these areas, both academically and in the popular press, and is regularly consulted by government bodies, think-tanks, media and other organizations in his fields of expertise. He has served in an advisory capacity to the United Nations, UK Home Office, the Foreign Office, the US State Dept., Council of Europe, NATO and the OSCE amongst others. He is Founder and Chair of the Political Science Association’s Specialist Group on Political Violence & Terrorism. His books include Radicalisation and Media: Terrorism and Connectivity in the New Media Ecology (2011, Routledge), Jihadism Transformed: al-Qaeda and Islamic State’s Global Battle of Ideas (2016, Hurst/Oxford University Press), The Crusades in the Modern World (2019, Routledge), Radicalisation: Narratives and Identities (forth. 2021, Cambridge University Press) and Radicalisation in Global and Comparative Perspective (forth. 2021, Hurst/Oxford University Press). He is on Twitter: @Akil_N_Awan

Director

Dr John Morrison

Dr. John F. Morrison is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology. He is the co-programme director of the MSc in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Studies, which launched in the academic year 2019/20. He is also the Undergraduate Education Lead for the Department of Law and Criminology.

John holds a BA in Psychology from University College Dublin, an MA in Forensic Psychology from University College Cork and a PhD in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews.

Prior to joining Royal Holloway in September 2018 John was a Reader in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London (UEL). In 2016 John became the founding director of the Terrorism and Extremism Research Centre (TERC) at UEL. John was also a a posttdoctoral researcher at The International Center for the Study of Terrorism, at The Pennsylvania State University between 2010 and 2011. In that year he managed the Violent Dissident Irish Republican research project.

John is an asscoiate editor of two leading academic journals in terrorism studies, Perspectives on Terrorism and Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. He is also the host and developer of the Talking Terror podcast. On the podcast he interviews leading experts in terrorism and counter-terrorism studies.

John's research interests include organisational splits in terrorist groups, the role of trust in terrorist involvement, violent dissident Irish republicanism, the psychology of terrorism, expert-novice differences in terrorist offenders, and the social ecology of radicalisation. He is on Twitter: @morrison_jf