Tore Bjorgo: Terrorist Disengagement - a podcast by John F. Morrison

Dr. Tore Bjørgo (born 1958) is professor at the University of Oslo and Director at “Center for Research on Extremism: Right-Wing Extremism, Hate Crime and Political Violence” (C?REX). He is also Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Police University College (PHS), where he has been Professor of Police Science (since 2004) and Research Director (2005-2007). Until the end of 2015, he was an adjunct research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), where he was a (senior) research fellow from 1998 until 2004. He has also been a research associate at Leiden University (1991-1997). Since 2002, he has been coordinator of the Norwegian Consortium for Research on Terrorism and International Crime. During autumn 2014, he was a Fulbright scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. He received his doctoral degree in Social Science from the University of Leiden in 1997 on the basis of a dissertation on racist and right-wing violence in Scandinavia. For his Cand. Polit degree in social anthropology (University of Oslo 1987) he did 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 1984, based in Jerusalem.

His research has covered a broad range of topics, often in combinations: political violence/terrorism, racism/right-wing extremism, deradicalisation and disengagement, criminal gangs and subcultures, crime prevention/counter-terrorism, police science, conflicts in the Middle East, and political communication.

Research that has Influenced Tore
Umberto Eco: Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984) / Name of the Rose (1980) (the second illustrates his semiotic theory in the format of a crime novel)
Alex P. Schmid and Janni de Graaf (1982): Violence as Communication: Insurgent terrorism and the Western news media
Helmut Willems (1993): Fremdenfeindlische Gewalt: Einstellungen, Täter, Konflikteskalation

Some of Tore's Key Research:
Leaving Terrorism Behind: individual and Collective disengagement (2009, with John Horgan)
Strategies for Preventing Terrorism / Preventing Crime (2013/2016)
Vigilantism against Migrants and Minorities (an ongoing book project

Further episodes of Talking Terror

Further podcasts by John F. Morrison

Website of John F. Morrison