In line with its mission “to enhance security through collaborative research”, the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI) brings together individual and institutional research efforts by actively facilitating cooperative efforts among scholars and professionals. With this in mind, TRI is pleased to present a new inventory of over 200 institutions and centers in the field of terrorism and counter-terrorism research.
This Research Note builds upon similar earlier efforts by Teun van Dongen (Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No 8; April 2018) and Benjamin Freedman (Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 4, No. 5; November 2011). In line with their effort, this Research Note has adopted (and expanded upon) their methodology in terms of definitions,data collection, and structure. Similar to Van Dongen’s 2018 efforts, we explicitly focus on “organizations that have terrorism research as a ‘core business’, i.e. that have a department or a program specifically devoted to terrorism or counter-terrorism and/or that list terrorism and related forms of political violence as one of their research priorities”.
This Research Note is based on several categories of sources. First, it makes extensive use of the two earlier Research Notes. In doing so, the compilers have assessed whether the think tanks listed in the earlier editions are still active. Second, we relied on the most recent (i.e., 2019) list of Top Defense and National Security Think Tanks, compiled by the Go To Think Tank Index. Given the specific focus of this Research Note, we have filtered our entries for relevance. Third, we conducted an extensive Google search, using a set of search queries, in various combinations, including “terrorism”, “counterterrorism”, “research institute”, “think tank”, and “university”. Fourth, to further minimize the risk of missing important centers, we have consulted various members of the editorial board of Perspectives on Terrorism as well as other researchers in the field.As result, we have been able to identify a total of 201 organizations (see Figure 1). These organizations have been classed into six categories; (i) universities and university affiliated research groups (44); (ii) think tanks (108); (iii) government organizations (24); (iv) research networks (10); (v) commercial entities (6); and (vi) other (9). Within each category, organizations have been listed alphabetically. In- or exclusion of organizations in this inventory is in no way an indication of the quality of their research output and should not be viewed as such.
