Prof. Stuart Macdonald
Professor Stuart Macdonald studied Law at the Universities of Cambridge (BA) and Southampton (PhD). In 2005, he joined Swansea University, where he was appointed Professor in 2016. He is co-director of the University’s £7.6m EPSRC CHERISH Digital Economy Centre (http://www.cherish-de.uk/) and the multidisciplinary Cyberterrorism Project (http://www.cyberterrorism-project.org/). Macdonald is the author of Text, Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (Pearson, 2015) and co-editor of Terrorists’ Use of the Internet: Assessment and Response (IOS Press, 2017), Violent Extremism Online: New Perspectives on Terrorism and the Internet (Routledge, 2016), Terrorism Online: Politics, Law and Technology (Routledge, 2015) and Cyberterrorism: Understanding, Assessment and Response (Springer, 2014). He has previously received research funding from the British Academy and NATO’s Emerging Security Challenges Division, and has held visiting scholarships at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Université de Grenoble-Alpes, University of Sydney and Columbia University, New York. In 2016/17, he was the holder of a Fulbright Cyber Security Award.
Recent cases of attacks by released terrorist prisoners highlight issues around the risk of re-offending posed by former terrorist prisoners. What are the appropriate processes and systems for managing and risk assessing such individuals, and to what extent is rehabilitation possible in the context of terrorist offending? This Policy Brief will explore these and related […]
On May 19th, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they were commencing terrorist proceedings related to a February 24 stabbing attack at a massage parlour in Toronto. In doing so, they claimed that this attack—in which an unnamed 17-year-old male killed a woman and injured one other individual—was inspired by what they call ‘Ideologically Motivated Violent […]
In 2013, four young British men from West London travelled to Syria to join ISIS. Dubbed ‘The Beatles’ by their hostages, and subsequently the global media, this British ISIS cell allegedly became responsible for at least twenty-seven beheadings of Western hostages. Six years have since gone by and despite their capture the remaining two members […]