Crime Science academics win funding to lead projects tackling national security threats

Congratulations to Professor Noemie Bouhana, Professor Paul Gill and PhD Candidate Bettina Rottweiler.

CREST is the UK’s hub for behavioural and social science research into security threats. Earlier this year, CREST offered £1.25m to fund innovative proposals within its latest round of commissioning. After a rigorous and independent review process, 11 projects in total have been selected.

Learn more about our Department’s projects below.

Assessing the Environmental Risk of Terrorism: Operationalising S5 (ASSESS-5)

Project lead: Professor Noemie Bouhana

When we assess the risk of unlawful extremist behaviour, we tend to pay attention first and foremost to individual-level attributes, such as life experiences, motivations, or psychological characteristics. Yet we know from years of criminological work that context plays a key role in moving people to adopt criminal mindsets and engage in crime, including terrorism.

This project is the continuation of a decade-old research programme chiefly concerned with investigating the emergence of terrorism-supportive environments and the ways people get exposed to their radicalising features. Its aim is to operationalise the programme's logic model, known as S5, and deliver a prototype framework to support the practical analysis of extremism risk at the level of place. 

Conspiracy Theories and Extremism

Project lead: Professor Paul Gill and PhD Candidate Bettina Rottweiler

Recent perpetrators of terrorism and other forms of political violence referenced a wide-ranging number of conspiracies, suggesting some form of link between extremist and conspiratorial mindsets.

Previous survey-based research – conducted in Germany – by the project team showed that stronger conspiracy mentalities are associated with increased violent extremist tendencies. This relationship was much stronger for individuals exhibiting lower self-control, higher self-efficacy, and holding weaker law-related morality (Rottweiler & Gill, 2020). This was the first paper to demonstrate the common psychological roots underpinning both conspiracy theory belief and violent extremist intentions, and the risk/protective factors that might mitigate against them. 

This new project builds on these foundations in several ways. First, it conducts a systematic review/meta-analysis of the risk and protective factors for conspiracy theory beliefs. Second, it extends large-scale surveys and data collection on these topics into the United Kingdom. Third, the surveys will additionally collect information on specific conspiracy beliefs rather than general conspiracy mentalities. Fourth, the surveys will expand the range of risk and protective factors under scrutiny and inform risk assessment and management initiatives when both political extremes are conspiratorial thinking are co-present. 

Commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, CREST is funded by the UK’s Home Office and security and intelligence agencies to deliver a world-class, interdisciplinary portfolio of activity that maximises the value of behavioural and social science research into security threats. The Centre is led by Lancaster University, with significant input from the universities of Bath, Central Lancashire, Portsmouth, St Andrews and University College London.

A full list of the successful applicants can be found on the CREST website.