Dr David Roberts (School of Anthropology and Conservation) was recently received research award funding from the Royal Society through an Apex Award for his project ‘A transdisciplinary approach to inferring the end of political violence’, which will run from September 2022 to April 2023.
Knowing whether a terrorist group is still a threat or not is essential to national and international security. Conservation science is a crisis discipline that is rooted in issues around extinction risk. This project brings together a Dr David Roberts (School of Anthropology and Conservation, conservation biologist), Dr Harmonie Toros (political scientist) and Professor Rachel McCrea (statistician), to explore the application of extinction models from conservation in a political violence context, specifically whether a given terrorist group still persists and if not, when it became ‘extinct’.
David says: “We are living in a time of both environmental and political upheaval, where understanding risks has never been more important. In conservation, interest lies as to the persistence of species. Such knowledge has major implications for understanding biodiversity collapse and allocation of limited resources. In studies of political violence, while understanding of how entities such as terrorist groups form is widely-studied, little research has been conducted into how they end. Knowing if such groups still persist has major implications for understanding of current threats and actions. Further, it is also important for groups who previously engaged in terrorist activities, but wish to move to political dialogue; at what point are they no longer considered terrorists?”
Congratulations to David on this achievement.