December News: New international collaboration; Graduate Certificate in Terrorism Analysis

IEP report draws on START data, echoes START findings
A major annual report from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the 2018 Global Terrorism Index, draws on data from START’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to assess the economic impact of terrorism and report on trends. The IEP report echoes findings in the GTD overview, released earlier this year, that terrorist attacks have decreased for the third consecutive year, but violence remains historically high.

• GTD Overview
• IEP GTI report

Wilkenfeld gives keynote address at ATHENA ‘18
Serving as the keynote speaker for the 15th Annual ATHENA Conference in Athens, Greece, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, ICONS founding director, explored the challenges of crisis management and how mediation can assist in dealing with international crises. Read more.
 
START team offers counterterrorism training to Albanian officials
William Braniff and Barnett Koven traveled to Tirana, Albania, this month to teach an Executive Forum on foreign terrorist fighters for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Antiterrorism Assistance program. Rooted in START research and focused on governmental approaches for disrupting the foreign terrorist fighter lifecycle and responding to a threat, this training is geared towards sharing best practices and lessons learned from the international community and the U.S. Department of State with senior leadership from the criminal justice community within Albania. Read more.
 
LaFree lectures on ‘Changes in Worldwide Terrorism’
Gary LaFree, founding director of START, recently gave a lecture “Changes in Worldwide Terrorism,” which analyzed the Four Waves of Modern Terrorism Theory. LaFree focused his lecture on his analysis of the two most recent waves, the New Left and the Religious. Read more.
 
Childhood hobby inspires international dream
The future career interests of START GIS intern Steven Chao took form at an early age. Physical road maps, world maps and GPS all fascinated – and still fascinate – Chao, who hopes to use his geospatial analysis skills to assist in humanitarian development efforts in regards to water scarcity. Read more.

SUPPORTING START

Help Support START Research and Education
The START Consortium is dedicated to generating knowledge of the human causes and consequences of terrorism. Applying rigorous standards to both research and education, START seeks to illuminate one of the most highly politicized and understudied phenomena in the social sciences for students, practitioners and policy-makers. Funded primarily through research grants to date, START is seeking to generate an endowment that will provide the flexibility and autonomy to ensure that it can continue to serve as an objective source of data and empirically based analysis into the future.  To donate, or for more information, please click here.