CV

Education

PhD, Criminology (2021 - ongoing)

Gender and the online extreme right: Mapping linkages and fractures

Master's Degree (2020 - 2021)

MSc Social Research Methods (Distinction), Swansea University

Undergraduate Degree (2015 - 2018)

BSc (Hons) Criminology and Psychology (First Class) from Royal Holloway, University of London

Research History

Undergraduate Research Assistant (2015 - 2017)

Sorted and catalogued police transcripts of interviews with child victims for analysis

Undergraduate Research Assistant (2017 - 2018)

Assisted a PhD student in her research on eyewitness testimony of children
Taught simple first aid to 97 children for them to be interviewed after the event

Undergraduate Dissertation (2018)

Anarchish: An Exploration of Group Dynamics in Classically Non-Hierarchical Activist Groups.
Qualitative research project interviewing 11 people (1 pilot interview and 10 participants)

Researcher for Directory of Social Change (2020)

  • Internet-based research during first lockdown of Covid-19 pandemic
  • Designed a survey with open and closed questions
  • Read charity commission documents to track grant giving practises of Charity Trusts
  • Created Python script to facilitate searching for relevant charity funding schemes

Masters Dissertation (2021)

Qualitative study of 19 terrorist manifestos using Inductive Thematic Analysis
Manuscript currently under review at Critical Studies in Terrorism

PhD Research (2021 - ongoing)

Multi methods project combining web crawling, hyperlink network analysis, social network analysis, and content analysis of extremist websites. In progress.

Scholarships, Awards and Grants

ESRC Studentship, 1 + 3 (2020 - 2024)

Received an ESRC studentship for my Master's and PhD. This included a full fee waiver, stipend, and a travel and education bursary. Co-Sponsor: Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

Hart Bequest Award (2017)

Received the Hart Bequest Award for Best Performing Second Year in Criminology and Psychology for outstanding performance. This award was valued as a £1000 contribution towards my third-year tuition fees.

Terrorism and Social Media Research Grant (2022 - 2023)

Part of a team that secured a grant of £5000 to complete a research project studying the benefits and barriers of multistakeholder collaboration in the field of preventing and countering violent extremism. Manuscript in preparation

Conferences

Society for Terrorism Research Postgraduate, 2022

Presenting: Responding to emasculation: Expressions of hegemonic masculinity in terrorist manifestos (MSc Dissertation research)

Terrorism and Social Media, 2022

Presenting: Using Python to map extremist websites: Methodological issues (PhD research)

Society for Terrorism Research, 2022

Presenting: 14 Words, 2 genders: A discourse analysis of transphobic narratives on far-right social media

Society for Terrorism Research, 2023

Presenting: An exploration of #TradWife content on Pinterest and Whisper

Work Experience

Senior Teaching Assistant, Swansea University (September 2022 - Present)

  • Leading seminars in several modules, Employability (1st year), Foundations in Social Science Research (1st year), and Criminological Theory Content and Application (2nd year).
  • Assisting with workshops in Foundations in Social Science Research (1st year), The Sociological and Criminological Imagination (1st year), and Drugs, Crime and Alcohol (2nd year).
  • Masters level teaching: Wrote and delivered a 2 hour lecture on Gender, Crime, and Masculinities for a core module on Swansea's Applied Criminal Justice and Criminology MA

Researcher, Directory of Social Change, Liverpool (March 2020 - September 2020)

  • Wrote blogs on funding opportunities for charities during the coronavirus crisis (the Gypsy Roma and Traveller community charities, and for BAME charities)
  • Produced daily updates during the Coronavirus crisis on funding opportunities for charities with a colleague
  • Worked on policy documents summarising information on the Coronavirus crisis from the government for charities
  • Worked on a report into the support provided for armed forces families by the armed forces charity sector (Focus On Armed Forces Charities' Support for Families)

Internship, RUSI (May - October 2023)

  • Assisted with RUSI presentations on the political implications of Jihadist criminal trials
  • Wrote a literature review for a paper on gender and right wing extremism (in pres)
  • Wrote an article for a special issue of the RUSI journal on far right use of AI

Additional Skills

Computer programming

  • Familiar with Python and R, can use both languages to analyse and present data
  • Built a web crawler in Python as part of my PhD to build a map of far right websites
  • Can scrape a variety of internet data, such as images, PDFs, and text, using Python
  • Completed freelance work creating a dataset of court transcripts for a colleague at Swansea University
  • Can access and scrape websites on the Dark Web using Python
  • Basic HTML and CSS

Modern languages

  • Simple Italian
  • Basic Welsh

NextJS site created by Sophia Warren.

Original CSS & design by Genevieve Clifford.