Dr Philip Chilton
Dr Philip Chilton has taught history at Curtin University since 2017, where he has specifically run and lectured in units around terrorism and insurgency. His Doctor of Philosophy was entitled, “Claiming Connolly: the legacy of James Connolly and Irish republicanism, 1966-2005” (2014) and he retains an expertise on the IRA and extremism in Irish politics. Philip has had particular interests in researching and understanding vaccine-skeptic and far right movements within Australia.
Leena Adel
Leena Adel is a PhD researcher at Curtin University. She has obtained her LLM in International Law and has a BA in Cultural Studies, Political Science and International Relations. Leena has taught and lectured in international relations and history units at Curtin university. Her current research explores intersectional approaches to understanding womens political participation during regime transitions - particularly within the MENA region.
Michael Wieteska
Michael Wieteska is a PhD researcher and sessional academic at Curtin University. He has a BA in Philosophy and MA in International Relations. Michael has run units on international relations and terrorism studies, and more broadly taught across middle eastern politics and cyber affairs. Michael's doctoral research focuses on assessing the impacts that tech companies are having on multilateral discussions about cyber-warfare legislation, and his broader research interests include incels and the manosphere.
Dr Christian Duperouzel
Dr Christian Duperouzel is a lecturer in the Curtin Law School. Prior to joining Curtin, he was a practicing lawyer in Fremantle who specialised in the area of commercial litigation. In 2017, Christian completed his doctoral studies which explored the role of a lived calling in driving the leadership accomplishment of a virtuous purpose. In addition to leadership and vocational studies, other areas which Christian has a strong interest in are spirituality, human rights and responsibilities, conscious business, the countering of extreme ideologies and integrated forms of corporate governance.
Professor Mike Kent
Mike Kent is a professor in the Centre for Culture and Technology and the discipline lead for the Curtin University iSchool. Mike’s research and writing normally focus on issues related to disability, social media and access to communications technology. His interest and writing with CERN revolve around the use of social media and related technology by extremists as tools for both recruiting and radicalisation.
Todd Morley
Todd Morley is a PhD Researcher and Casual Academic at Curtin University. With postgraduate qualifications in both international relations and history, Todd has run undergraduate and postgraduate classes on topics ranging from national security, international relations theory, and the history of political violence. Todd’s current research focuses on the radicalisation patterns of lone actor terrorists, and he maintains broader research interests in the areas of preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE), ontological security studies, and counterinsurgency theory.
Dr Lachlan Howells
Dr Lachlan Howells is a writer and researcher from Perth. He holds degrees in sociology and finance from Curtin University, where he is currently completing his PhD. Lachlan’s ongoing research interests include the contemporary use and politics of online platforms, humour, videogame culture and live-videogame streaming. More recently, Lachlan has begun research into online extremism, investigating how young people counter and resist extremist narratives on Twitch.tv. Lachlan has published in Arena online and presented at conferences across Australian universities.
Yannick Bowe
Yannick is a PhD researcher at Curtin University studying Social Capital theory and how it can be used to explore the social actions of extremists. Professionally, he works in the finance industry specialising in socioeconomic research with a focus on emerging technologies and the future of the Internet. His interest in CERN is to help influence policy through a greater understanding of the mechanics of radicalisation online.
Grace Brooks
Grace Brooks is an interdisciplinary doctoral researcher at the University of Western Australia, specialising in 20th century Australian labour history and representations of industrial disputes within Australian film and television. Grace has taught at both Curtin University and The University of Notre Dame across history and international relations, including histories of 20th century political violence and terrorism.
Paul Sutherland
Paul Sutherland is a practicing artist and PhD candidate at Curtin University. His doctoral research investigates the online visual cultural expressions of political extremism in the 21st century and their art historical genealogies. Paul attained 1st Class Honours with his research into the phenomenological experience of photographic subjectivity, and has taught units in photography and digital media art in DBE and MCASI at Curtin University since 2019.
Professor Kit Messham-Muir
Professor Kit Messham-Muir is an art theorist, educator, researcher and critic based at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. His doctoral thesis examined the role of affect and emotion in political conflicts surrounding contemporary art in the 1990s. Since 1997, Prof Messham-Muir has taught art history at universities in Australia and Hong Kong and won multiple awards for teaching. He publishes frequently in peer-reviewed and popular press (Artforum, Art & Australia, The Conversation) and directs the StudioCrasher video project. Prof Messham-Muir is author of Double War: Shaun Gladwell, visual culture and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Thames & Hudson 2015), and with A/Prof Uroš Čvoro (UNSW) is co-author of Images of War in Contemporary Art: Terror and Conflict in the Mass Media (Bloomsbury 2021) and The Trump Effect in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture: Populism, Politics, and Paranoia (Bloomsbury forthcoming 2022). Prof Messham-Muir is lead investigator on ‘Art in Conflict’, an Australian Research Council funded linkage project in partnership with the Australian War Memorial and the National Trust (NSW), and in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales and the University of Manchester.
Sarah Fulford
“Sarah Fulford is an Historian and currently undertaking a PhD at Curtin University focused on the marginalisation of Australian nurses during military conflict. Sarah has worked at the University for over two decades and brings a wealth of experience about Curtin functionality to this research group. The focus of her research in CERN is on the gendered nature of extremism and the role women play within the context of extremist ideology
Dr Sian Tomkinson
Dr Sian Tomkinson is a media and communications scholar who specialises in video games, gender, and Deleuzoguattarian philosophy. Her core research focus revolves around player engagement with video games, meaning-making, and communities of play, including toxic online communities. Sian’s work has been published in Games and Culture, Continuum, and gamevironments, among others. She co-hosts a game studies podcast called Meaningful Play.
Our people
Dr Ben Rich
Dr Ben Rich is a senior lecturer in International Relations and History at Curtin University and is the network convener of PERN. His research has focused on various aspects of Saudi domestic and foreign policy. Ben has worked on a range of topics relating to extremism, political violence and radicalisation including the impact of foreign fighters, the intersection between religious fundamentalism and authoritarian governance, the role of ontological insecurity in fomenting politically extreme views, and the processes and structures that underpin online extremist communities.
