We are excited to announce the Histories of Terrorism Conference at the University of St Andrews on 23 June 2026.

Organised by the Historians of Terrorism Network within HaCC, in collaboration with CSTPV and Manchester Metropolitan University, this event will allow us to explore the significance of a historical approach to the study of terrorism and political violence.

Programme for the conference

10am Welcome

10.15am Keynote Chair: Tim Wilson
Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht): The forgotten decade of modern terrorism: how Metternich’s security commissions constructed the threat of radicalization, 1818-1848

11.15am Break

11.30am Panel 1 Chair: Chris Millington
Kieran McConaghy (St Andrews): Rebel soldiers: British ex-servicemen in Irish Republican paramilitary groups
Natasia Kalajdziovski (Independent): Before the war on terror: the intelligence war against the IRA and the historical foundations of counterterrorism

12.30am to 1.30pm Lunch

1.30pm Panel 2 Chair: Tim Wilson
Lara Green (Erasmus University, Rotterdam): Terrorism and transimperial imaginaries: Russian and Irish revolutionaries in the 1880s
Michele Benazzo (Geneva): The Asian Youth Movement and street vigilantism: a case for re-evaluating small-scale violence in the European history of terrorism

2.30pm Break

2.45pm Panel 3 Chair: Chris Millington
Annelotte Janse and Graham Macklin (Fribourg and C-Rex, Oslo): Recovering far-right agency: historical methods and the internal perspective in the interdisciplinary field of far-right and terrorism studies
Simon Taylor (Durham): From Archive to analysis: methodological challenges in researching state terror

3.45pm Close