Earlier this year, CREST offered £1.25m to fund innovative proposals within its latest round of commissioning. After a rigorous and independent review process, the 11 successful projects (listed below) were selected.
Commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, CREST is funded by the UK’s Home Office and security and intelligence agencies to deliver a world-class, interdisciplinary portfolio of activity that maximises the value of behavioural and social science research into security threats. The Centre is led by Lancaster University, with significant input from the universities of Bath, Central Lancashire, Portsmouth, St Andrews and University College London.
Speaking about the announcement the Director of CREST, Professor Stacey Conchie, said:
We have a fantastic set of projects that once again draw on a variety of methods and disciplines that are key to the success of CREST and the growth of our community. The projects promise to drive forward our understanding of topics as diverse as security interventions in public spaces to the prosecution of extremists. I look forward to seeing what the teams produce.
The successful applicants announced today are:
- Professor Noemie Bouhana, University College London.. Assessing the Environmental Risk of Terrorism: Operationalising S5 (ASSESS-5).
- Dr Lewys Brace, University of Exeter. Con.Cel: Tracking the Online Contagion of Incel and Male Supremacist Ideology.
- Dr Calvin Burns, University of Greenwich. The Effect of Different Online Mediums and Variable Formats on Information Disclosure in Vetting Interviews.
- Professor Paul Gill, University College London.. Conspiracy Theories and Extremism.
- Anastasia Kordoni, University of Lancaster. Detecting Hybrid Social Identities: A Computational Analysis of Influence and Resilience in Online RWE Communities.
- Professor David McIlhatton, Coventry University. Evaluating Security Interventions in Public Locations: Developing and Testing a Co-created Framework for Protective Security.
- Professor Rachel Monaghan, Coventry University. Prosecuting Extremists in the United Kingdom: An Exploration of Charging, Prosecution, and Sentencing Outcomes.
- Dr Alexandra Phelan, Monash University. Misogyny, Hostile Beliefs, and the Transmission of Extremism: A Comparison of the Far Right in the UK and Australia.
- Dr Nicola Power, Lancaster University. The Psychology of Interoperability: Building Better Multi-Agency Counter-Terrorism Training (INTEROP).
- Dr Charis Rice, Coventry University. Situational Threat and Response Signals (STARS): Understanding Overt Communications in Terrorism Deterrence across Different UK Contexts.
- Professor Martin Innes, Cardiff University. Mapping and Modelling Influence Interactions between Conspiracy Communities and Extremist Entities (MICE2).