This month, START awarded 10 doctoral and post-doctoral students Terrorism Research Awards (TRAs). This year’s cohort is uniquely diverse, with four international students and many others coming from all corners of the United States. Additionally, two of this year’s mentors are former TRA awardees themselves: Erica Chenoweth and Joseph Young.
The Terrorism Research Award (formerly known as the START Pre- and Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program) is available to graduate students and to scholars who have completed a Ph.D. program within the last five years. Those selected as TRA winners receive $5,000 in funds to dedicate toward research expenses and professional development experiences to support their work in the area of terrorism studies.
Each TRA recipient works closely with an individual mentor drawn from the START research consortium. Mentors involve TRAs in their own START-related research, supervise TRA recipients’ research, and help develop plans for using the award to advance TRA recipients’ educational and research goals.
A complete list of 2015-2016 Terrorism Research Awardees, their START researcher pairing, and project titles can be seen below:
- Marisa Mandala (Josh Freilich), John Jay College of Criminal Justice/City University of New York Graduate Center: “Environmental Criminology and the Prevention of Successful Terrorist Assassinations”
- Steven Windisch (Pete Simi), University of Nebraska at Omaha: “Priming Events and Cognitive Shifts: The Process of Accepting Extremist Beliefs”
- Joel Day (Erica Chenoweth), University of Massachusetts – Lowell: “The ISIS Bandwagon: Why Domestic Terrorists Ally with the Islamic State”
- David Hoffman (Gary Ackerman), SUNY Polytechnic Institute: “Threat Identification and Threat Assessment of Apocalyptical and Millenarian Groups within Canada”
- Kerry Persen (Martha Crenshaw), Stanford University: “Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Responses to Islamist Political Violence”
- Michael Nwankpa (Amy Pate), University of Roehampton: “A Social and Information Network Analysis of Boko Haram”
- Emily Corner (John Horgan), University College London: “The Psychogenesis of Terrorism”
- Paul Gill (Josh Freilich), University College London: "Sequencing Lone Actor Terrorist Radicalisation and Attack Planning"
- Stephen Nemeth (Joseph Young), Oklahoma State University: “Organizing Terror: A Database of Terrorist Leaders”
- Caitlin Mastroe (Susan Szmania), Cornell University: "An Analysis on the Implementation of Countering Violent Extremism Plans"