Donald Holbrook
Donald Holbrook is an Associate Fellow at ICCT. He became a lecturer at the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion at Lancaster University, UK, in September 2016. Prior to that he was Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews, which he joined in 2008.
His research has focused mostly on beliefs, ideas, and media in the context of terrorism and political violence, especially on how terrorists interact with published media and social media and how this engagement has changed over time. He has published on a wide variety of topics relating to these themes, including a book, edited volumes, journal articles, as well as reports and other deliverables for counterterrorism practitioners and policymakers. He currently manages a large-scale research project dissecting ways in which individuals involved in terrorism use different types of media, developing case studies and thematic analyses of different ideological milieus (including far-right and Islamist extremism), different types of activity (including domestic terrorism and ‘foreign fighters’) and different organisational contexts (such as groups versus lone actors), as well as comparisons across sections.
A selection of publications can be found on http://lancaster.academia.edu/DonaldHolbrook
In this Perspective, I aim to illustrate that although the crime-terror nexus has attracted significant attention of late, it is not a new phenomenon, and has past iterations that offer useful lessons for its present form. I reference my own experience as a police officer in Scotland and draw parallels to far older diaspora communities […]
As a service to ICCT’s readers, ICCT Associate Fellow Dr. Donald Holbrook summarises key points of his work and makes suggestions for further reading. Research Summary ‘What types of media do terrorists collect?’ analyses religious, political, or other ideological media publications that were uncovered in police investigations relating to individuals convicted of involvement in Islamist-inspired […]
A number of Indonesian nationals who support the self-styled Islamic State have now returned home from the Middle East. Some may have received military training or even seen combat, but so far the majority have been those who failed in their attempts to enter Syria and Iraq from Turkey and were subsequently deported. While recent […]