Leadership Team

Miraji Mohamed is a research fellow at the Conflict Institute of Dublin City University; and an affiliate at the Cyber Threats Research Centre of Swansea University. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from Dublin City University. Her research primarily explores the conceptualisation of radicalisation, the position of youth in the peace and ...

Ashley A. Mattheis holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work brings together cultural studies, media studies, and rhetorical criticism, through the lens of feminist theory to explore the material effects of cultural production and consumption online. Her areas of inquiry include topics such as masculinities and ...

Lewys Brace is a Lecturer in Computational Social Science and part of the University of Exeter’s Q-Step Centre, where he specialises in data science/computational research methods, extremism, terrorism, cybercrime, and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and the lead for the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence’s ...

Dr Amy-Louise Watkin is a lecturer of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of the West of Scotland. Amy-Louise formerly spent three years running the VOX-Pol blog and now assists in the running of the Next Gen Network. Amy-Louise’s research interests lie in online extremist and terrorist content and the regulation of such content. ...

Seán Looney is a lecturer in Criminology at the University of Plymouth. His research interests include the regulation of online terrorist and violent extremist content, and the impact of bulk surveillance on the promotion and protection of human rights. Sean undertook his PhD at Swansea University as a member of CYTREC and is a former ...

Ryan Scrivens is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He is also an Associate Director at the International CyberCrime Research Centre at Simon Fraser University and a Research Fellow at the VOX-Pol Network of Excellence. He conducts problem-oriented interdisciplinary research with a focus on terrorists’ and extremists’ use ...

Brigitte Naderer is a senior researcher at the Public Mental Health Research Unit, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna. Her research focuses on media effects, media literacy, and persuasion processes. Her recent work includes research on 1) online radicalization processes and 2) evaluation of media literacy interventions, as well as 3) work on ...

Maura Conway is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University (DCU) in Dublin, Ireland, Professor in Cyber Threats in CYTREC at Swansea University, UK, and was the founding Coordinator of VOX-Pol. Prof. Conway’s principal research interests are in the area of terrorism and ...

Jonathan Collins is a PhD candidate at the Department of Security Studies at Charles University, concentrating on the rise of the Far-Right as both a social movement and threat for violent mobilisation. Specifically, he aims to connect the current political, social, and economic grievances arising from the ongoing pandemic with the discursive recruitment and dissemination ...

Stuart Macdonald is Professor of Law at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, UK. He is Co-Director of the University’s Cyber Threats Research Centre (CYTREC), Coordinator of the VOX-Pol Network and Director of the VOX-Pol Institute. Stuart’s research focuses on terrorist’s use of the internet. Most recently, he has examined jihadist narratives, ...