This is a roundup of what CREST has been up to this April. You can stay up-to-date by signing up to the CREST Newsletter, and have CREST news and updates delivered straight to your inbox.
Notices
Purdah!
Due to the announcement of the General Election our digital channels may be a little quieter than usual. This is because, as a non-departmental public body, the ESRC is bound by purdah during the pre-election period, from midnight (the evening) 21 April 2017 until at least 9 June 2017.
The purdah restrictions extend to ESRC- funded research and researchers and any sub-contractors that are employed as part of the research project – which includes CREST and our commissioned projects.
The most significant impact this has had is that we have been unable to announce the new research that we are funding through our second commissioning call. We hope to be able to make that news public soon. Watch this space!
ECR Series
When we launched CREST, one of our central aims was to increase the capacity of researchers with the tools, the skills and the desire to engage in research on security threats. A crucial element of that strategy was developing a new generation of researchers, from across a range of disciplines, who could be the future leaders of security research.
Throughout April, many of these researchers wrote blogs about the projects they are working on with CREST. We’re proud of the range and quality of all the research CREST carries out and we hope you’re just as excited about the new research taking place.
You can you read all the blogs from our early career researchers here. Remember to check back as they update us on their work.
Invitation to Tender
CREST seeks to commission an independent review
Initial funding for CREST was secured from the UK security and intelligence agencies following a competitive process administered by the ESRC. This initial funding is for £4.35 million over three years. A further £2.2m has been invested by CREST’s founding Institutions.
CREST now seeks an independent, evidence-based evaluation of its activities and achievements in its first two years of operation.
Bidders are encouraged to propose their own metrics and methodology for competing the evaluation effectively. They can expect to receive appropriate documentation (e.g., KPI tracking) from CREST, and face-to-face interview time with relevant Centre members.
The primary outcome from this review will be an evidence-based assessment of the extent to which CREST has achieved the objectives set out in its mission statement.
Deadline: 10am 25th May 2017
For more information click here.
Opportunities & Events
National Academies Decadal Survey on Social and Behavioral Sciences for National Security: Second call for white papers
As part of the outreach and information gathering requirement, the decadal survey has two separate calls for white papers. Papers submitted in response to the first call (February 2017) can be found here.
The first call asked for insights into the challenges and needs across a range of social and behavioral domains with implications for national security and intelligence analysis.
The second call focuses on research solutions in the social and behavioral sciences to a variety of analytic challenges and needs. For more information click here.
The deadline for submissions is June 12, 2017.
iIIRG 2017 Monterey, CA.
10th Annual Conference & Masterclass of the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group
The iIIRG annual conference promotes specialist knowledge exchange between practitioners and academics, professionals and researchers, all with an interest and expertise in:
- Investigative interviewing of victims, witnesses, and suspects
- High interest groups and intelligence interviewing
- International war crimes investigations
- Interview advice, training, and decision making
- Specialist interviewing skills (including intimidated, vulnerable and reluctant witnesses, use of intermediaries)
- Forensic linguistics
- Detecting deception
Join for the two day masterclass on intelligence interviewing and three days of professional presentations on the most recent research findings, and ample opportunities to share best practice.
For more information about the conference and venue: www.iiirg.org
July 2017
Masterclass: 3 July – 4 July
Conference: 5 July – 7 July
2017 Society for Terrorism Research’s (STR) Annual International Conference: Call For Papers
The 2017 Society for Terrorism Research’s (STR) Annual International Conference will be hosted by New York University’s Center for Global Affairs in New York City 14-15th August 2017. STR have extended the deadline for proposals to 15th May 2017. Please find attached the call for papers. Conference registration will open shortly and further information will be available here.
Proposals for paper presentations, symposia, posters and other formal sessions will be considered for inclusion in the programme if they are received by 15 May 2017.
All submissions and enquiries should be sent via email to Dr Mary Beth Altier, Dr. Jeff Thompson and Dr Lyndsey Harris at str2017nyc@gmail.com
Please visit STR website for more details: www.SocietyForTerrorismResearch.org
The deadline for submissions:
Papers, Symposia, Posters, and Round-Table Proposals: 15 May 2017
Notification of Acceptance: 1 June 2017
Early Bird Conference Payment: 15 June 2017
Student Paper Contest Submission: 1 July 2017
ESRC call for this year’s Festival of Social Science
The 2017 Festival call is now open for applications to receive up to £1,000 in funding to organise a public engagement event and be part of the Festival of Social Science 2017, which will run from 4-11 November.
This is a special year for the Festival, celebrating its fifteenth anniversary and hoping to reach more people and parts of the UK than ever.
In 2017 the Festival team is particularly keen to receive applications for events:
- to be held in London or the East of England
- run by or featuring early career researchers
- from first-time organisers
- that are aimed at specialist interest audiences
- that encourage participation from children or young people.
Need inspiration? Take a look at previous events. For more information click here.
The deadline for submissions:
5 May 2017 for funded applications
12 May 2017 for non-funded applications.
New Resources
CSR: After Islamic State
The Islamic State’s territory is in decline. Squeezed on all sides, it is facing a future where it can no longer lay claim to statehood.
In this issue of CREST Security Review (CSR), leading scholars from around the globe consider ‘what happens after Islamic State?’
The problem of Islamist violence will not decline with Islamic State. Many of the underlying issues that contributed to its rise will still exist.
The fourth issue of CSR, ‘After Islamic State’ brings together leading academics from around the world to consider these issues. It is available to download, read and share for free here.
CREST on film
CREST YouTube channel
Our YouTube channel showcases some of the research and work undertaken by CREST Researchers. Watch these videos and learn more about what other CREST researchers are doing. We encourage you to share these videos, which you can also view on our website here.
All of our videos are available under Creative Commons licence, which means you are free to share but please attribute by linking back to our youtube channel and website.
Watch Dr Jasjit Singh talk about his CREST research on Sikh radicalisation in the UK.
Subscribe to the CREST channel!
DON’T FORGET to subscribe to our channel so you don’t have to manually search for new videos we upload.
Out and about
New Grant Awarded
CREST Director Paul Taylor and CREST associate Kirk Luther have received a grant from N8 Policing Research Partnership Catalyst Project. The N8 PRP has granted £22,571 to the project: “The manipulative presentation techniques of control and coercive offenders: What are they and how can interviewers best deal with them?”.
Blog post for LSE Business Review
Nicola Power and Laurence Alison have written a post for the LSE Business Review on their recent paper: How multi-agency teams made decisions in a simulated terror attack.
Press and publications
Journal publications
- Gill, P. and Corner, E. (2017) “There and Back Again: The Study of Mental Disorder and Terrorist Involvement”. American Psychologist 72(3): 231-241.
- Gill, P., Corner, E., Conway, M., Thornton, A., Bloom, M., and Horgan, J. (2017) “Terrorist Use of the Internet by the Numbers: Quantifying Behaviors, Patterns & Processes”. Criminology and Public Policy 16(1):99-117.
- Corner, E. and Gill, P. (2017) “Is There a Nexus Between Terrorist Involvement and Mental Health in the Age of the Islamic State?” The CTC Sentinel 10(1):1-10.
- Oostinga, M. S. D., Giebels, E., & Taylor, P. J. (in press). “An error is feedback”: The experience of communication error management in crisis negotiations. Police Practice and Research: An International Journal.
- Taylor, P. J., Holbrook, D., & Joinson, A. (2017). A same kind of different: Affordances, terrorism and the Internet. Criminology and Public Policy.
- Giebels, E., Oostinga, M. S. D., Taylor, P. J, & Curtis, J. (2017). The cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance impacts police-civilian interaction. Law and Human Behavior, 41, 98-102.
Book/Report/Proceedings
- Weir C, Rashid A, Noble J. I’d Like to Have an Argument, Please: Using Dialectic for Effective App Security. In Proceedings of the 2nd European Workshop on Usable Security. Internet Society. 2017.
- Weir C, Rashid A, Noble J. Developer Essentials: Top Five Interventions to Support Secure Software Development. Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2017. 9 p.
- Charitonidis, C., Rashid A., & Taylor, P. J. (2017). Predicting collective action from micro-blog data. In J. Jawash, N. Agarwal, & T. Ozyer (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Social Networks: Prediction and inference from social networks and social media (pp. 141-170). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Blog roundup
Read and share:
- What Makes People Susceptible To Malevolent Influence Online? by Emma Williams
- The Role Of Gender In Violent Extremism by Rosie Mutton
- After St Petersburg: Russia And The Threat From Central Asian Terror Networks by Mark Youngman and Cerwyn Moore
- How Do We Measure Rapport In Interviews? by Lynn Weiher
- How Do Teachers Engage With PREVENT? by James Lewis
- The Importance Of Terrorists’ Families And Friends by Simon Copeland
- Russia’s Domestic Terrorism Threat Is Serious, Sophisticated And Complex by Mark Youngman and Cerwyn Moore
- Grassroots Counter Messaging In The UK by Ben Lee
- Connecting Culture To Deception Detection by Irina Tache
- Early Career Researchers On Security Threats by Matthew Francis
Copyright notice
We believe that our work should be shared as widely as possible. Therefore we licence all of our blogs, guides and other resources on this website under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. This means that unless otherwise noted, you can republish our content online or in print for free (although you can’t sell it). You just have to credit us and link to us. For more information visit our copyright page.
