Lead supervisor:
Prof Alan Collins 
Other supervisor(s):
- Dr Dawn Bolger
Start date: October 2024 (Full time)
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Politics, International Relations and Global Language Based Area Studies
Thematic Cluster:
Rights and Governance Cluster
PREVENTing Extremism and Safeguarding Contestation: The Role of Agonistic Institutions in Counterterrorism
The research is concerned with the polarisation of political debates that can lead to terrorism, and it adopts agonism as its conceptual frame. The seminal text is Chantal Mouffe’s On the Political (2011). Mouffe defines agonism as a we/they relation and does not treat polarisation as a problem to overcome, but rather something constitutive of human societies. To link agonism to contestation, the project will examine how a set of institutional practices establishing “participatory spaces” for debate, enable/constrain the participants. The research will engage with Critical Terrorism Studies and will utilise the UK’s counterterrorism Prevent Strategy as its empirical application to examine whether effective partnerships and governance structures are in place to enable an effective agonistic participatory space.
Research Impact
To investigate the guiding principles for how law enforcement engages with certain communities and whether the current set of practises that are used creates a safe space to participate and create agonistic relationships. It will not look to address or provide a conclusion as to whether the counter-terrorism policies of the UK are successful in practise, but will instead seek to evaluate the framing for how this is conducted.