The debut episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast discusses environmental security and COP 26 with Prof. Richard Beardsworth, the Head of the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, and Dr. Nicole Nisbett, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds.

This fascinating discussion explores how climate change is securitised by different actors, actors’ different experiences of climate change and climate diplomacy, the potential conflict between climate security and other forms of security, and how does the Russian invasion of Ukraine impact on the challenge of climate change and the need for climate action. In doing so the episode seeks to address the central question: is the world more secure or insecure today as a result of COP 26?

In this second episode of Insecure: A Security Podcast we discuss the future of terrorism studies with Dr Gordon Clubb, Associate Professor in Terrorism at the University of Leeds and a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Radicalisation and De-Radicalisation Studies and Mohammad Didarul Islam, a PhD student at the University of Leeds and an Assistant Professor at the University of Dhaka.

This fascinating discussion explores current and emerging trends within terrorism studies, the nature of ‘the terrorist threat’, and the relationship between the study of terrorism, extremism, and CVE (counter-violent extremism).

It also showcases the research undertaken by both our speakers on CVE and deradicalisation in different contexts, as well as, their thoughts on the current state of terrorism studies and the existing literature.

In this bonus episode Dr Harrison Swinhoe and Marine Gueguin discuss their own research within terrorism studies.

Dr Harrison Swinhoe is an Early Career Research at the University of Leeds. His PhD thesis explored how the Islamic State’s strategic narratives of sovereignty and political legitimacy were constructed through the English language propaganda content produced by the group between 2014 and 2017. In so doing his thesis analysed a range of discourses constructed by the Islamic State and the relationship between these discourses and the group’s strategic narratives of sovereignty and political legitimacy. This thesis was supervised by Pr Jack Holland and Dr Gordon Clubb. Dr Swinhoe has also published an article in Critical Studies on Terrorism entitled, ‘“They are not muslims. They are monsters”: the accidental takfirism of British political elites’, which explored discursive practices utilised by British political elites to police the boundaries of religion and the potential implications and risks of these discursive practices.