Spotlight: ISS researcher wins top terrorism study award

In recognition of her contribution to the field of terrorism studies, ISS senior researcher Dr Anneli Botha has received the Terrorism Research Initiative's best PhD thesis award for 2014.

Published on 11 November 2015 in Impact

Dr Anneli Botha, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), has received the Terrorism Research Initiative’s (TRI) award for the best PhD thesis in the field of terrorism and counter-terrorism studies in 2014. Of 14 doctoral theses received, hers was the only one from Africa.

The award shows that ISS researchers, both in their professional and personal capacity, drive the organisation’s approach of conducting research for the policy environment in a way that is authoritative and empirical.

Botha’s thesis entitled ‘Radicalisation to commit terrorism from a political socialisation perspective in Kenya and Uganda’, was based on extensive fieldwork she conducted in two East African countries to identify the factors that radicalise young people in the region. The jury was especially impressed by Botha’s original field research and her ability to thoroughly question and test assumptions about why young people join terrorist groups. TRI directors Robert Wesley, James Forest and Alex Schmid made up the panel.

Researchers drive the ISS' approach to policy research that is authoritative and empirical

Botha’s passion for the topic was ignited 10 years ago in eastern Algeria, in a region known as the ‘triangle of death’. There, Botha met a mother with a tragic question. She wanted to understand why one of her sons was a policeman, and the other a militant member of a violent extremist organisation. ‘That was a defining moment,’ says Botha: ‘Why are there such different outcomes in the lives of people from the same background?’

For the past 15 years, Botha has played a major role in articulating a much-needed African perspective on terrorism, with her research focusing on the causes of terrorism, and how best to respond to it.

In 2014, Botha released an acclaimed ISS paper based on her PhD study into the causes behind the radicalisation of young men who join the Mombasa Republican Council and al-Shabaab on Kenya’s east coast. This led to a similar study on al-Shabaab in Somalia that was conducted by the ISS in partnership with Finn Church Aid. For the first time, fieldwork and qualitative interviews were able to show that Kenya’s counter-productive response to terror was actually fuelling more violent extremism.

For more information, contact:

Dr Anneli Botha, ISS: +27 82 822 6412, [email protected]