Governing Board
Rachel Monaghan, Ph.D.
President
Coventry University, UKRachel is a Professor in Peace and Conflict at the Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations at Coventry University. Prior to this she lectured in Criminology at Ulster University. Her Ph.D. was from the University of Reading, England and examined the phenomenon of single-issue terrorism. She has been researching political violence in the United Kingdom for nearly twenty years and has published articles on single-issue terrorism, animal rights extremism, loyalist violence in Northern Ireland and vigilantism in the International Criminal Justice Review, Space and Polity, Terrorism and Political Violence and the Journal of Conflict Studies. She is Co-Editor of the journal Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism & Political Aggression and is on the editorial board for Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.Violet Cheung, Ph.D.
Secretary
University of San Francisco, USAViolet is a professor in the department of psychology at the University of San Francisco. Her research on mass emotions started at 9/11 while she was completing her doctorate degree at UC Berkeley. She examined angry responses to the terrorist attack and how the public sentiment precipitated the U.S. to go to war. She now focuses on anxious and fearful responses in the new contexts of cyber insecurity, the migrant crisis and the Covid pandemic. She also uses big data analytic tools to examine public sentiments on social media. Her research was funded by the American Psychological Association and her first-author publications appeared in journals such as Aggressive Behavior, Political Psychology and Emotion.Tali K. Walters, Ph.D.
Treasurer
Forensic Mental Health Consultant Boston, MA, USATali has been a member of the Governing Board of the Society for Terrorism Research, since 2006. She has led STR as its President and Vice-President, and Chair of Conference Planning. She organized the annual international conferences, served as Associate Editor to the society’s journal Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, recruited board members, and led the organization through strategic change. Dr. Walters is a senior supervising forensic psychologist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She served on the faculties of the Harvard Medical School, Tufts Medical School, and Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (now William James College). She consults to the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and to criminal defense and prosecution attorneys in her private forensic mental health consulting practice.John Bahadur Lamb, Ph.D.
Chair – Membership
University of Virginia, USAJohn is the Director of the National Criminal Justice Command College at the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. His research specializes in the role policing plays in helping protect against counter-terrorism, radicalization, security studies and the role of police in supporting intelligence services. A graduate of the Universities of Kent and Leicester. He regularly works with the police, the military and the media, in the UK and abroad, to both share best practice and to provide objective and critical commentary on proposed counter-terrorism methods. He was previously a Senior Lecturer within the Institute of Policing at Staffordshire University.Tina Billington-Hughes
Member-at-Large
University of Northampton, EnglandTina is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Northampton. A former Police Detective she has vast knowledge of the criminal justice system, extensive investigatory skills particularly around major and transnational organised crime and was instrumental in the development of investigative methodologies and strategies and multi-agency partnerships. Having achieved a BSc (Hons) in Policing from Canterbury Christ Church University, an MSc Terrorism Studies from the University of East London and the Certificate in Terrorism Studies from the University of St Andrews, Tina is currently undertaking her PhD at De Montfort University (Leicester) examining ‘What predisposes an individual to support transnational organised crime-terror groups’. She co-organises the annual STR Postgraduate Conference in collaboration with various universities in order to promote postgraduate research in the wider area of terrorism studies.Darin Challacombe
Member-at-Large
Fort Hays State University, USADarin is an adjunct professor in the department of psychology at Fort Hays State University and directs education at a nationwide medical records company. Prior to moving into the private sector, he worked in the counter-terrorism space for the U.S. government including assignments supporting Afghanistan and Central Asia. His current research focuses on domestic terrorist collectives like the sovereign citizens, the use of structured professional judgment tools in better understanding criminal and terrorism activities, and personality changes due to stressful events. In addition to serving on several boards, he also serves as an associate editor for Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression.João Raphael da Silva
Chair - Social Media
University of the West of England, UKJoão has been working towards a Ph.D. (Social Work and Social Policy – Ulster University, Belfast, Northern Ireland). In this context, he was a Visiting Ph.D. Researcher at the Centre of Discourse Studies (Barcelona, Spain). His doctoral thesis will compare how the British Parliament and US Congress discursively criminalized the Radical Environmental and Animal Rights movement between 1970 and 2022. Also abroad, he had been awarded an MA (International Relations – Central European University, Budapest, Hungary) and a BA (International Relations – Centro Universitário La Salle do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Previously, his research has been published by the peer-reviewed Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism and Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression journals. Since 2022, he has worked as a Lecturer at the Department of Criminology at the University of the West of England (Bristol, England).
Advisory Board
James N. Breckenridge, Ph.D.
Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness, Analysis, & Planning, Palo Alto University, CaliforniaBruce Hoffman, Ph.D.
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Security Studies Program Georgetown University Washington, D.C.Arthur J. Kendall, Ph.D.
President, Social Research Consultants
Seminole, FLJohn F. Morrison, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Criminology, Maynooth University, IrelandTom Pyszczynski, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs, CO