Morality and Radicalisation

Terrorist attacks typically result from some form of purposive decision-making by the terrorist on the rights and wrongs, as well as the costs and benefits, of targeting particular sites. This talk demonstrates a model of terrorist decision-making which considers such moralisation and draws on a number of first-hand accounts by the terrorists themselves.

Is there a common underlying cause between the spread of conspiracy theories, radicalisation into terrorist groups, disinformation, polarisation and social fragmentation? Have we structured our societies in such a way that we built in their own undoing? Is analytic thinking part of the problem, not the solution? This talk will cover infield interviews with members of ISIS, Neo-Nazis, QAnon, and others; psychometric surveys and psychology experiments conducted throughout "the West" and the Middle East, and North Africa.

Dr. Liam Collins-Jones is a UCL-EPSRC Doctoral Research Fellow at DOT-HUB. Liam’s work focusses on developing diffuse optical tomography methods to enable network connectivity to be studied in awake babies. Liam finished his PhD in 2021, which sought to advance methods using fNIRS & structural data to image longitudinal changes in activation in the baby brain. Outside of academia, Liam is the National Coordinator of Student for Kids International Projects (SKIP, https://www.skipkids.org.uk/), a charity which aims to improve the health, welfare and education of children.