Introduction: teaching and researching terrorism – pressures and practice

Abstract

This special section has come about as a result of a series of activities convened by the Teaching about Terrorism Working Group. The group was established in 2008 and held its first meeting at Strathclyde University in September of that year. The group focused on pedagogical issues faced by academics engaged in the delivery of courses on ‘terrorism’, political violence and associated subjects. The group offered a forum for discussion of these contested issues and encouraged a wide participation from academics and teachers in this area. After securing some support from the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) of the UK Higher Education Academy, the group held a series of further meetings, including a seminar in Manchester in 2010, and hosted a panel at the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference in April 2011. The group was originally founded following the arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza in Nottingham in May 2008. The founding statement noted the issues that the group felt to be of note: