START researcher Leah Peckham began her path in START’s Global Terrorism Studies Minor and a Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) internship that sparked her interest in radicalization and targeted violence. Today she contributes to research that strengthens policy, prevention, and our understanding of emerging extremist threats.
How did you first get involved with START?
I first got involved with START during my undergrad. I was studying Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland when I heard about the Global Terrorism Studies Minor offered by START at UMD. It was a fantastic program that allowed me to specialize in something within the Criminology and Criminal Justice field. I learned that I loved researching, and more importantly, loved delving into how individuals radicalized to extremism. In my junior year summer, I was fortunate enough to intern on the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the US (PIRUS) project at START, which led me to where I am today!
How did you become interested in your field of study?
When I first started college, I never thought I would end up as a researcher in this field. Sure, as cliché as it is, I loved watching Criminal Minds and listening to True Crime podcasts, but I actually started out in college as an Architecture major. I was really passionate about art and loved the program at UMD. However, I also started college during the COVID-19 pandemic. As much as I enjoyed studying architecture, the social justice movements in 2020 drove me to study Criminology and Criminal Justice in the hopes that I’d be able to have more of a positive impact on the criminal justice system in my future. Only a few weeks after I changed my major, we saw the January 6th riots. As terrible as it was, it was incredibly interesting to learn about why people were driven to engage in such violence. That led me to apply to the Global Terrorism Studies Minor offered by START.
Who has been the most influential person during your academic pursuits?
One of the most influential people who shaped my academic journey was a professor I had in the Criminology and Criminal Justice undergrad program. It was during a particularly difficult year for me in undergrad, between being burnt out from a heavy course load, time-consuming extracurriculars, and personal life issues, I wasn’t feeling excited for the new semester. Little known to me, I was taking a class called “Courts and Sentencing” with someone who would become my favorite college professor. His class was so engaging and interesting; it reinvigorated my passion for my studies and extracurricular activities. I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to conduct some research with this professor, despite having no research experience myself. I’m so thankful for that opportunity, which opened doors for me later on in this field.
What’s been one of the more interesting projects you’ve worked on?
One of the most interesting projects I worked on was the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the US (PIRUS) dataset. Though I don’t work much on this project anymore, it was my absolute favorite internship. I learned so much about radicalization pathways and ideological movements in the United States. The most interesting part was understanding exactly how each individual extremist radicalized. I also had the opportunity to analyze our PIRUS dataset for trends in prison radicalization. Despite learning that there is not much prison radicalization in the US, I was able to explore a topic that, to this day, still interests me. I further dove into how important it is to have systems set in place to encourage disengagement during an extremist's incarceration and/or supervised release. I hope to continue to expand this research with data from a current project I’m working on.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on two main projects. I work on adding incidents to the Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) dataset, where we study premeditated, grievance-based attacks. This ranges from incidents involving terrorism, premeditated hate crimes, workplace violence, school violence, public mass casualty attacks, and other forms of targeted violence. I am also working on a project that is working to understand judicial disparities and rates of recidivism for extremists convicted of ideologically motivated crimes in the United States.
Is there a specific research gap that you’re interested in studying?
I’m very interested in studying ideologically motivated online harm groups that target children, like 764, MKY, the general Com, and No Lives Matter. Though these groups have been known to law enforcement combating child exploitation for a while, there is a lack of research on the impact of the introduction of extremist ideologies into these groups. At START, our Terrorism and Targeted Violence (T2V) dataset has a few cases where individuals exploited by these online groups were led to plan or commit an act of targeted violence. I hope to delve deeper into these cases and explore how ideologies – like neo-nazi accelerationism and nihilistic violent extremism – change this threat landscape.
Additionally, I hope to analyze one area of targeted violence that has little available research online: Workplace Targeted Violence. While there has been extensive research on workplace violence in hospitals and general workplace violence, our T2V dataset is one of the first to study premeditated, grievance-based violence in the workplace. We are also one of the only open-source targeted violence datasets to provide the most up-to-date data possible. As we continue our research on the T2V dataset, I hope to be able to assist in providing analysis on the trends of workplace violence targets, weapons, locations, perpetrators, victims, mobilization indicators, and much more.
What is your favorite part about your job?
There are a lot of things I love about my job – my co-workers, the ability to learn something new every day – but what keeps me most motivated to continue this research is how relevant it is. Our analysis of the first six months of 2025, compared to the first six months of 2024, showed a 39.5% increase in the number of events and a 28% increase in the number of people killed in Terrorism and Targeted Violence attacks. This is devastating, and not the news us researchers want to hear. We hope to use our data to reduce targeted violence by informing public policy decisions, educating law enforcement who respond to these attacks, and improving prevention efforts. We are living in increasingly violent times, and what keeps me motivated to continue this research is the hope that our data can be used to help prevent and reduce targeted violence.
What are your plans for the future?
Frankly, I’m not entirely sure! I have a few research questions I’d love to explore, like the research gaps I mentioned above. Other than that, I hope to remain in this field and I hope to have a more direct, hands-on impact in preventing ideologically-motivated and grievance-based attacks.
Outside of work, what do you do for fun?
2025 has been the year of new hobbies for me. After work, you can find me baking sourdough, gardening, hanging out with friends and family, reading fantasy books, occasionally rock climbing, and currently relearning how to ride a bike as I pick up training for a triathlon in the dead of winter!