Director
Assistant to the Director
Grants and Proposals Assistant
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Center Fellow
Center Fellow
Center Fellow
Center Fellow
Center Fellow
Center Fellow
Center Fellow
Center Fellow
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
PERSONNEL
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Horgan John G. Horgan | Director
Dr. Horgan is Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at the Pennsylvania State University, where he is also Associate Professor of Psychology. Author of more than sixty publications, Dr. Horgan’s books include The Psychology of Terrorism (2005), The Future of Terrorism (1999, with Max Taylor), Walking Away from Terrorism: Accounts of Disengagement from Radical and Extremist Movements (2009) and the forthcoming Divided We Stand: The Strategy and Psychology of Ireland’s Dissident Terrorists (with Oxford University Press). He is a member of the Editorial Boards of Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Behavioral Science of Terrorism and Political Aggression, and the Journal of Strategic Security. Dr. Horgan is a member of the Research Advisory Board of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). He holds a Ph.D. and B.A. in Applied Psychology from University College, Cork. |
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BRYAN D. CARTER |
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Assistant to the Director
Mr. Carter is Assistant to the Director of ICST. Prior to his current position, he spent four years in the US Navy as a Cryptologic Technician with Top Secret (TS/SCI) security clearance. He provided real-time threat analysis and created and administered training programs to prepare junior personnel for high-stress work environments aboard submarines. He holds a B.S. in Labor Employment Relations from Penn State. |
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MACHELLE L. SEINER |
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Grants & Proposals Assistant
Ms. Seiner is the Grants and Proposals Assistant at ICST who serves as the point of contact for project sponsors and manages all financial operations and administrative functions of ICST. She is a twenty-year Penn State staff veteran who recently obtained her certification as a Penn State Research Administrator. Ms. Seiner has held previous positions as a Psychology Department Financial and Clinical Training Assistant, an Undergraduate Assistant in Meteorology, and was the Lead Data Entry Coordinator in the Undergraduate Admissions Office. |
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MIA M. BLOOM |
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Center Fellow
Dr. Bloom is Associate Professor of International Studies and Women’s Studies at Penn State. She is a leading expert on suicide terrorism and is the author of Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (2005). In addition to her research on terrorism, Dr. Bloom conducts research on ethnic conflict, the strategic use of rape in war, and child soldiers. Her most recent book, Bombshell: The Many Faces of Women Terrorists, was published by Penguin in 2011. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Russian and Middle East Studies from McGill University. |
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CHRISTOPHER H. GRIFFIN |
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Center Fellow
Dr. Griffin is currently the Department Head of the Convergence Studies Department at the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) at The Pennsylvania State University where he also teaches Game Theory and Optimization in the Department of Mathematics. |
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MICHAEL C. KENNEY |
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Center Fellow
Dr. Kenney is Associate Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He is an expert in organization theory, international security, and illicit non-state actors, including drug traffickers and terrorists. Dr. Kenney has held research fellowships with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation (2007). His published work has also appeared in Survival, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Global Crime, and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, among other publications. Dr. Kenney recently conducted research on Islamist activism in Spain, the United Kingdom, and Morocco and is currently involved in ICST’s research project on Competitive Adaptation in Terrorist Networks. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Florida. |
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SINFREE B. MAKONI |
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Center Fellow
Dr. Makoni is Associate Professor African Studies and Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University. He is a Pan-Africanist and has worked in a number of institutions in Africa. Prior to Penn State, Dr. Makoni was the Dubois-Mandela-Rodney Fellow at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He has extensive professional experience in Southern Africa, including Chair of Linguistics at the University of the Western Cape and Associate Professor of Language and Literature at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He was also a faculty member at Long Island University. He is the former president of the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association, an Executive Board member of the International Applied Linguistics Association, and the co-chair of African Applied Linguistics and Literacy. Some of his publications include a monograph on “Colonial and Postcolonial Language Policies in the Sudan” (2011, Current Issues in Language Planning 2011), “Language and Ageing in Multilingual Contexts” (2005, Multilingual Matters). He has published in Language in Society, Journal of Cross Cultural Gerontology, The Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, and Language Sciences. Dr. Makoni is a native of Southern Africa, completed his undergraduate work in Ghana, and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. |
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BRYAN L. MCDONALD |
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Center Fellow
Dr. McDonald is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Penn State. His research explores the interactions between complex, networked societies that amplify traditional security challenges and create new security threats and vulnerabilities that affect the national security of states and the human security of individuals and communities. Dr. McDonald’s current research topics include food security, food safety, and food defense; the environmental dimensions of peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction; and the security impacts of transnational threats such as global environmental change, global health threats, and global terrorism. Dr. McDonald is the author of Food Security (2010) and co-editor of Global Environmental Change and Human Security (2009) and Landmines and Human Security: International Politics and War’s Hidden Legacy (2004). He holds a Ph.D. in Social Ecology from the University of California, Irvine, and an M.A. in Political Science from Virginia Tech. |
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JAMES A. PIAZZA |
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Center Fellow
Dr. Piazza is Associate Professor of Political Science at Penn State. His research examines political, economic, social, and religious factors that predict patterns of terrorism using quantitative analysis. His published work has investigated poverty as a cause of terrorism, failed states as incubators of terrorism, whether or not democracies experience less or more terrorism, and the relationship between human rights and terrorism. He has also studied the effects of religious ideology and group organizational features on suicide and high-casualty terrorist attacks. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University and an M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Michigan. |
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PHILIP A SCHRODT |
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Center Fellow
Dr. Schrodt is Professor of Political Science at Penn State. Prior to coming to Penn State in 2010, he taught for twenty-one years at the University of Kansas, where he chaired the development of the university’s multidisciplinary programs in international studies. He also taught for eleven years at Northwestern University, where he helped develop programs on mathematical methods in the social sciences. Dr. Schrodt's major areas of research are quantitative models of political conflict and computational political methodology. His current research focuses on predicting political change using statistical and pattern recognition methods, research that has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. government's multi-agency Political Instability Task Force. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.A. in Mathematics and from Indiana University. |
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MAX TAYLOR |
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Center Fellow
Prof. Taylor is Professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is a forensic and legal psychologist, with interests and experience in counter terrorism, psychological issues related to terrorists and terrorism, the Internet crime and terrorism, and more generally applied criminology.Prior to St. Andrews, Prof. Taylor was Professor of Applied Psychology at University College, Cork, Ireland from 1983–2006. He is the author of ten books and numerous academic journal articles, mainly in the area of terrorism studies and child protection and the Internet, and is currently editor of Terrorism and Political Violence. He has served on a number of UK, EU, and Irish Government Committees related to terrorism and Internet crime, including the Government of Ireland Internet Advisory Board. He was a consultant to the UNICEF Special Representative to the Former Yugoslavia from 1993–96. |
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MARY BETH ALTIER |
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Altier is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ICST and Project Manager on “Pathways, Process, Roles, and Factors for Terrorist Disengagement, Re-Engagement, and Recidivism” (PI John Horgan). She is interested in the study of political violence, political behavior, nationalism, and ethnic conflict. Her doctoral dissertation, “Voting for Violence” investigates the reasons why civilians decide to support paramilitary organizations and the political parties with which they are often affiliated. Dr. Altier holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University and a B.A. in Mathematics and History from Drew University. View Publications |
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PAUL A. GILL |
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Gill is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ICST and Project Manager on “From Bomb to Bomb-Maker: A Proposal to Develop a Social Network Analysis Model of the Socio-Psychological and Cultural Dynamics of the IED Process” (PI John Horgan). His doctoral thesis, “The Dynamics of Suicide Bombing in Campaigns of Political Violence,” focused on the underlying individual and organizational motivations behind suicide bombing and why constituencies of people give support to the perpetrators. He was awarded the prestigious 2010 Jean Blondel Prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in Political Science in the European Union. In addition to his research on terrorism, Dr. Gill is also interested in research on political psychology, political mobilization, and social movements. Dr. Gill holds a Ph.D. in Political Science, an M.A. in International Relations, and a BSocSc(Int) from the School of Politics and International Relations in University College Dublin, Ireland. |
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