Critical Studies on Terrorism Annual Virtual Conference

Contemporary issues in Critical Terrorism Studies 

The world is on fire! Political activism, protest, dissent, and political opposition are among the responses to a world that is plagued by war, famine, genocide, climate change and the global rise of fascism. The framing, manipulation, and instrumentalisation of the label ‘terrorism’ plays a central role in efforts to silence and criminalise such activism and dissent. Various practices of surveillance, control, and punishment are constantly refined and globalised and contribute to a growing and global counter-terrorism apparatus that becomes ever more far-reaching, pervasive, and normalised. 

Draft programme

(This programme is still in draft form, if you are a panellist and need us to change the timing of your presentation, please contact cst.group@bisa.ac.uk)

9 am - 9.15 am - Introduction and new convenor announcement

9.15 am - 10.45 am - Panel 1 Language and discourse: producing the truth of terrorism

Chair: CST convenor

• Richard McNeil-Willson (University of Edinburgh), Proscription as Counterterrorism Impact Assessment – approaches for understanding the impact of proscription on European (in)security.
• Kyle Matthews (Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington), (Lack of) Consultation over the Definitions of ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorists’ in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Kamran Khan (University of Birmingham), Language and (Counter)Terrorism
• Carlotta Sallach (Central European University), Embodied Encounters: Femininity, ‘Terrorism’ and the German Body Politic on Trial

10.45 am - 11 am- Break 

11 am - 12.30 pm - Panel 2 Occupation, colonialism and surveillance

Chair: CST Convenor

• Rohi Jehan (University of Manchester), "One Must Be Careful These Days": Surveillance, Debility, and the Politics of Invisibility in Kashmir
• Meabh Shearer (Queen’s University Belfast), Constructing Innocence: British Military Violence and the Politics of Impunity in Northern Ireland
• Hope Johnson (Cardiff University), Security as Repetition: Colonial Violence and the Policing of Protest in Kenya from Mau Mau to Saba Saba
• Abdul Rehman (Center for International Strategic Studies, Azad Jammu & Kashmir), The Panopticon State: Analyzing Surveillance Practices in Indian Administered Kashmir

12.30 pm - 1.15 pm - Lunch Break

1.15 pm - 2.45 pm - Panel 3 Digital and algorithmic counterterrorism

Chair: CST convenor

• Islam Al Khatib (LSE), Algorithmic Targeting and the Politics of Terrorist Classification in Palestine and Lebanon
• Haris Bin Aziz (National University of Modern Languages, Pakistan), From Proscription to Platforming: Islamophobia, Terror Labels, and the Digital Policing of Muslim Dissent in Europe
• Esra Merve Boztosun Çalışkan (Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey), Digital Dissidents as 'Cyber Terrorists': The Criminalization of Hacktivism in the Age of Global Authoritarianism
• Alp Cenk Arslan (Turkish National Police Academy), Terrorism Reframed? A Critical Reading of U.S. Security Institutions’ AI Strategy Documents

2.45 pm - 3 pm - Break 

3pm - 4.45 pm - Panel 4 ‘Radical communities': Preventing extremism, suppressing dissent

Chair: Mirna Guha

• Iida Käyhkö (Royal Holloway, University of London), Proscription, elimination and pacification in the British counterterrorism assemblage
• Hanan Fara and Sophia Butt (University of Birmingham), From Solidarity to Surveillance: Universities & the Policing of Palestine Activism
• Jane Horton (University of Liverpool), “You don’t want to risk anything”: Examining educators’ constrained agency in response to the Prevent Duty
• Sophia Butt and Mariyah Ali (University of Birmingham), Free Speech, Activism & Prevent
• Carlos Yebra López (California State University at Fullerton, USA), The Framing of ‘Jihad’ and ‘Baraka’ in Political Propaganda on Terrorism in Spain: The Case of the Madrid (2004) and Barcelona (2017) Attacks

Registration will close two hours before the event begins.