John Horgan: The Psychology of Terrorism - a podcast by John F. Morrison

In this week's episode John talks to Prof. John Horgan a Distinguished University Professor at the Global Studies Institute and Department of Psychology at Georgia State University. He has a PhD in applied psychology, and his research focuses on understanding psychological qualities of the pathways into, through, and out of terrorist behavior. His work is widely published, with books including The Psychology of Terrorism (published in over a dozen languages worldwide), Divided We Stand: The Strategy and Psychology of Ireland’s Dissident Terrorists; Walking Away from Terrorism, Leaving Terrorism Behind, and Terrorism Studies: A Reader. In 2017 he became Editor of the journal Terrorism and Political Violence and serves on the Editorial Boards of several further journals, including Legal and Criminological Psychology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Journal of Strategic Security. He is a member of the Research Working Group of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. He has held positions at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell), Penn State and the University of St. Andrews, UK. Professor Horgan’s research has been featured in such venues as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Vice News, CNN, Rolling Stone Magazine, Nature, Scientific American and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Research that has influenced John's career

Max Taylor (1988). The Terrorist.

Paul Wilkinson and Alastair .M. Stewart (Eds.) (1987). Contemporary Research on Terrorism.

Joby Warrick (2015). Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS.

Some of John's key research

Psychology and Terrorism: Introduction tothe Special Issue. American Psychologist. (2017)

From Profiles to Pathways and Roots to Routes: Perspectives from Psychology on Radicalization into Terrorism. (2008)

Interviewing the Terrorists: Reflectionson Fieldwork and Implications for Psychological Research (2012)

Further episodes of Talking Terror

Further podcasts by John F. Morrison

Website of John F. Morrison