Understanding and explaining terrorism: Expertise in practice

Because terrorism and counter-terrorism are highly significant issues in international relations and domestic politics, terrorism expertise is a valued asset in public policy, the criminal justice system in media institutions and other domains.

Using an innovative, mixed method approach, the proposed study will seek to develop a deeper understanding of the individuals and institutions that have been most influential in shaping our understanding of terrorism.

The project also aims to undertake significant knowledge exchange and policy related work that aims to work with evidence-based research on terrorism and to embed it in policy and other domains. This will be undertaken by a variety of 'leadership' activities including sandpits, research retreats and a prominent 'wiki' website and social media presence.

It will measure the prominence of different terrorism experts in different domains, including academia, the media, the internet, the criminal justice system and the policy community. It will seek to address the question of why different experts are more or less prominent in these different domains and the question of whether there is such a thing as genuine expertise in terrorism and how we might identify it.

In particular the research will analyse the historical and institutional development of the use of terrorism experts as consultants by courts, governments and the media and will explore their ideological and institutional origins and affiliations. In addition the research will investigate the various think-tanks and private research institutes which provide support and funding to these experts and explore their origins and funding regime, as well as their in relations to other think-tanks and research institutes, governments, law enforcement, intelligence services, and private sector actors.

The findings will have significant benefits for policy makers, media and criminal justice professionals and businesses and civil society groups seeking high quality expertise on terrorism. The findings will also have a relevance for the general public - in particular those communities disproportionately affected by counter-terrorism policies, most obviously in terms of evidence based assessments of expertise and in terms of holding public institutions to account.

Engagement and impact are core functions of this project. The leadership elements aim to cohere the GU programme and to increase research involvement and capacity amongst the academic community. Equally important is to project the work of the programme, by embedding the insights of excellent research through Knowledge Exchange (KE) activities.

The project seeks to understand how terrorism knowledge is produced, communicated and with what impact. It is intended that the project will help to inform officials, the private sector, civil society and other audiences on the use of expert knowledge in the future. It is anticipated that the research will have a significant impact for a number of key beneficiaries.

It is important to stress that impact is the outcome of a process that involves knowledge exchange: that is it is a much more interactive than is allowed for in concepts like 'dissemination', 'popularisation' or 'knowledge transfer'. The PI on this project is currently PI on an ESRC KE project on multiculturalism (ES/J000795/1) and has extensive experience of knowledge exchange work.(See the Pathways to Impact document).

Primary users are likely to be UK based, but users in EU countries, the US, Israel, the Anglophone world and perhaps wider will likely engage. Users will include:

1. Policy makers (central, devolved and local government);
2. The Private Sector;
3. Criminal Justice professionals;
4. Media professionals;
5. Civil society groups (including Muslim groups and the Muslim population in general);
6. The public;

The KE and communications work on this project is intended to meet the following ESRC priorities:

1. Fostering global economic performance - by enhancing the ability of business decision makers to make evidence based assessments about terrorism expertise and therefore about risk. This has the potential to enhance the RCUK goal of accelerating 'delivery of benefits and economic impact'.

2. Increasing the effectiveness of public services and policy - by enhancing the evidence based information available to policy makers and researchers in government, the criminal justice system and the public sector, thus facilitating better decision making. The research will help criminal justice organizations to more adequately assess terrorism expertise and thus terrorism itself, leading to greater efficiency in terms of decisions to prosecute and/or avoiding potential miscarriages of justice.

3. Enhancing quality of life - by helping the Muslim community, civil society, media workers and the public in general to make evidence based judgements on terrorism expertise and thus to avoid damaging mistakes. In relation to Muslim groups and the public the research may also enhance their ability to make public authorities accountable in their use of terrorism expertise.

All of these impacts will be possible within the life of the project, since the evidence from the research will be widely available on the internet and will have risen to the top of Google searches by the end of the project. It is envisaged, however, that other aspects of the impact will take longer and occur in the medium to longer term, if at all, since they will also depend on ongoing KE work and collaborations with users. The most important impacts in terms of changes in practice by the private sector, media and Muslim community may take some years to occur, while government and criminal justice system changes may take up to a decade or even longer.(See Pathways to Impact)