My Journey
This post is authored by Samantha Jones | Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security
Over the past four years, I have been working on developing a lifecycle profile of terrorist organisations that could be used by industry. Supervised by Dr Kristy Campion and Dr Allan Douglas, the supervisory team provided ongoing support and expertise in this lofty endeavour, even in the face of adversity when others told me it couldn’t be achieved (challenge accepted). The supervisory team were exceptional, and I am incredibly lucky to have them as supervisors and mentors I believe this has made a significant impact on my overall positive experience being a doctoral student. The doctoral journey is filled with highs, lows and a complete immersion in literature. I read a lot of literature on the process of conducting research as a doctoral student and one aspect that I found to be true was imposter syndrome. From the point of being accepted as a doctoral candidate, I questioned why would they say yes. The more I read, the more I wrote, and the more I realised how much I didn’t know which seemed to fuel the belief that a mistake had been made when they accepted me.
So, I continued reading and writing until there was one instance where I stopped questioning myself and that was when I received feedback in my third year. There was a point where I realised I knew what I was saying, why I was saying it and its impact. I found that the hardest part of this journey was the last six months, as this was when everything started coming together quickly and there was a high volume of outcomes from the data analysis that did have an overwhelming impact in terms of what had been identified. This overwhelming period quickly passed as I knew that the thesis was coming to its final point. 2025 culminated in the successful development of a lifecycle profile of terrorist organisations and was submitted for examination. During this time, Rutledge Publishing showed interest in the research being turned into a book and subsequently sent a proposal out for review. The feedback identified that the research would be a valuable contribution to the field and was subsequently recommended to be turned into a book by Professor John Horgan who is a leading scholar in the field of terrorism and will be editing the book. In one year, I will have my first book published. Having my research being recognised to such a degree that a book contract has emerged from it, was not something I had ever anticipated happening. But I am incredibly grateful that it is and for the opportunity.
The book focuses on the lifecycle of terrorist organisations, contributing to the understanding of terrorist movements. It challenges existing conceptions of terrorism by drawing attention to the societal issues that give rise to terrorist organisations and illustrates their lifecycle, from their preformation to their formation, evolution, disintegration and disbandment. Previous studies attempting to profile organisations or individuals have been said to exist within disciplinary silos, overlooking cross-discipline or interdisciplinary explanations. A preliminary terrorist organisation lifecycle profile was developed by fusing concepts from psychology, sociology, criminology, geography and ideology with qualitative and quantitative data, effectively removing the silo effect. The selected case studies are transnational, transhistorical, cross-cultural and cross-ideological, contributing to a more holistic understanding of terrorist organisations.
This book investigates a range of extreme right-wing, left-wing, Salafi jihadist and separatist terrorist organisations to obtain a nuanced picture of their similarities and differences. Based on a mixed methods approach, eight terrorist organisations were qualitatively analysed in terms of their ideologies, motivations, propaganda use, resource mobilisation, radicalisation and recruitment, resilience and political and social developments and quantitatively analysed in terms of their timeframes, targets, weapons and locations. This was followed by a fusion of interdisciplinary data to identify patterns, trends, similarities and differences. The book explains that there is an identification of key stages in the organisation lifecycle (preformation, formation, evolution, disintegration and disbandment) as well as a sequence of events that take place during the lifecycle of a terrorist organisation that coincide with internal organisational changes and external societal and political disruptions.
Each doctoral candidate will go through many highs and lows; however, this is ultimately an experience that has the capacity to push you beyond what you thought you were capable of and open doors that you didn’t know existed. You need only determination and sometimes a pep talk to remind you that you have what it takes.