Welcome to Volume 13, Issue 7 of the monthly VOX-Pol Newsletter
TASM 2026
VOX-Pol was proud to co-host the fifth in-person TASM Conference, held at Swansea University on 16-18 June. There were a total of 293 registered delegates, from 30 countries around the world. As well as keynote presentations from VOX-Pol member Professor Paul Gill (UCL) and Vidhya Ramalingam, founder and CEO of Moonshot, attendees were able to choose from 41 different breakout sessions covering a wide array of different topics. For those that missed TASM, or would like to relive it, a selection of videos from the event are available via the CYTREC YouTube page.
VOX-Pol Summer School 2026 Recap
From 22-26 June, Swansea University hosted the ninth VOX-Pol Summer School. We were delighted to welcome 23 students for a week-long masterclass. This year’s cohort included PhD students, practitioners, and policymakers from ten different countries and four continents. The week included sessions on a range of violent extremist ideologies, methodological approaches, and regulation. We will announce the details of the tenth VOX-Pol Summer School, due to take place in 2027, later this year. If you’re interested, subscribe to our monthly newsletters!
VOX-Pol Member Publications
The paperback version of Dr. Elizabeth Pearson’s Extreme Britain: Gender, Masculinity and Radicalisation is out this month. The book is based on field work with both far right anti-Islam and Jihadist extreme actors in the UK, including discussion of their online activities. It has a new foreword by Professor Kathleen Blee, an afterword on recent challenges in tackling extremism and provides a gendered definition of extremism.
Sam Stockwell and Broderick James McDonald (The Alan Turing Institute / CETaS) launched the AI Disinformation Incident Repository, a new tool tracking AI-enabled deception during riots, armed conflicts, and security incidents. Accompanying this is their recent practitioner handbook, AI Information Threats and Crisis Response, offering actionable guidance for governments, AI labs, and social media platforms. Broderick James McDonald also appeared on LBC News with Lewis Goodall to discuss how extremist actors weaponized AI-generated content and deepfakes to fuel real-world unrest in Belfast and Southport.
J. Perez-Torres and K. A. Blount-Hill published a new paper in Behavioral Science & Policy titled “A mechanism scheme for improving extremist content detection & moderation algorithms,” exploring technical and structural enhancements for automated platform defense.
Dr. Jade Hutchinson published a new policy brief with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) titled Addressing Online Youth Radicalisation. Additionally, Dr Hutchinson has co-authored the book Social Work and Countering Violent Extremism: Case Management, Direct Practice and Multi-Sectoral Collaboration, which brings social work and countering violent extremism into sustained dialogue. Written as a practical guide, it equips social workers with the foundational knowledge, assessment tools, and case management approaches they need to respond to radicalisation, hate, and extremist violence. Shaped by Jade’s research on the sociotechnical dimensions of radicalisation, the book gives particular attention to how digital media environments shape pathways into extremism and how practitioners can assess and intervene across online and offline settings.
J.M. Berger contributed to a collaborative analysis featured on Tech Policy Press, outlining actionable interventions platforms must take to curb real-world escalations: What Online Platforms Can and Must Do to Help Mitigate Escalating Political Violence. He also spoke with CBC Radio’s Frontburner podcast to provide an expert breakdown on how researchers and authorities analyze extremist texts, following the online manifesto release tied to the Montreal incel shooter. Listen to the episode: How to read a manifesto.
Two new open-access papers have been published in the latest issue of the journal Sicurezza, Terrorismo e Società: Alessandro Bolpagni explores the weaponization of synthetic media in “Shield and compass in a digital world:” Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the Islamic State (IS) online ecosystem’s propaganda stream and Grazia Ludovica Giardini, Alessandra Pugnana, and Eleonora Ristuccia map the fast-moving aesthetics of short-form video radicalization in Embrace The Chaos: The ‘Mix&Match’ Extremist Ecosystem on TikTok.
Stephane Baele wrote a commentary for a Special Issue of Psychology of Violent Extremism titled Why the ‘salad bar’ might actually help extremism research – A reply to Horgan and Shayler. Arie Perliger also contributed a commentary to the same Special Issue.
On the VOX-Pol Blog
Recently published on the VOX-Pol Blog:
Inger Storm Sandboe and Antara Chakraborthy, Biology as Alibi for the Manosphere, June 10, 2026.
Saddiq Basha, The Mechanisms of Resilience: How True Crime Community ‘Game Studios’ Persist on Roblox, June 17, 2026.
Krista Fisher, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Emily Lewis, Ruben Benakovic, and Zac Seidler, We analysed the TikTok history of 142 men. Here’s what it taught us about the manosphere, June 24, 2026.
Mischa Gerard, Trigger Events, Digital Amplification, and Anti-Immigration Mobilisation in the UK, July 1, 2026.
Anat Lior, Should AIs be required to report a human user contemplating violence? July 7, 2026.
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