In the wake of the riots that have unsettled communities across England and Northern Ireland, a postdoctoral researcher from Magdalen College has provided expert analysis of far-right extremism for national and international media.
Dr Julia Ebner started as a researcher at Magdalen’s Calleva Centre earlier this year, and in recent days, her commentary has helped illuminate the complex socio-political dynamics underpinning these disturbing events. Her analysis has been featured in The Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Economist, as well as on Radio 4 and NPR.
Dr Ebner’s expertise on the riots is deeply rooted in her previous and ongoing work. One of her books, The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, analyses the type of fear and conspiracy theory that prompted the violence, and her latest book, Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over, explains the ways in which modern far-right violence can proliferate so greatly. Her work is also grounded in fieldwork infiltrating far-right networks and an Oxford DPhil thesis on the online communications of the far right, for which she was recognized as a finalist for the ESRC Celebrating Impact Prizes.
Building on this research, Dr Ebner and Magdalen College’s Professor Harvey Whitehouse are leading a two-year project into “When Despots Become Deadly: The Psychological Foundations of Institutionalised Extremism in Autocratic States”. Supported by Magdalen College’s Calleva Centre, alongside contributions from the Airey Neave Trust and a British Academy Talent Development Award, this project seeks to develop a psycholinguistic framework to assess the risk of autocratic leaders using extreme violence.
The Calleva Centre is committed to advancing research that addresses pressing global issues. For more information on the “When Despots Become Deadly” project and our other initiatives, please visit our website.
