✏️ After completing her six-month training with UCL's Cyber-Physical Risk CDT, Ellie's research will employ systematic literature review, computational linguistics, and simulation to assess how extremist content online promotes violence offline to identify countermeasures.
💻 Previously, she worked as a researcher in the online harms sector, implementing campaigns targeting individuals at risk of radicalisation and studying how extremist content is amplified and spread on social media platforms. She then retrained as a data scientist.
💡CTRG Researcher Spotlight #5: Ellie Wong💡
Ellie is a PhD student at UCL, researching the relationship between online extremist content and violence offline.
➡️ Even valid & reliable measures can have discriminant validity between items that may have practical implications - research should use more specific items or measures, at least in sensitivity checks
➡️ Meaningful risk factors can be obscured by use of broad dependent variables - research both can and should use more specific outcome measures, to help refine risk factors for more operationally relevant behaviours
➡️ Many correlates reveal how much terrorism/VE practice & research can draw upon theory & findings from the general violence field
Key findings & implications:
➡️ Even in a general population sample, different psychological and behavioural correlates emerge for different specific intentions
In this article for Terrorism and Political Violence, @amberseaward.bsky.social, @zoemarchment.bsky.social , and @paulgillucl.bsky.social use a general population survey to disaggregate intentions for specific proxy violent extremist behaviours
🚨 New CTRG publication: disaggregating risk factors for different violent extremist intentions 🚨
doi.org/10.1080/0954...
Key findings and implications in thread below 🧵
Follow to keep up to date with Lujia's research and upcoming events, and for more spotlights on the rest of the CTRG team!
The aim is to bridge the gap between research and practice by developing robust and relevant insights into youth radicalisation processes.
🙋 The next stage of research will use a Delphi study to translate empirical evidence into expert-informed consensus. This will bring together academics and practitioners in counterterrorism, safeguarding, and violence prevention to examine and prioritise key mechanisms the review identified.
Rather than treating radicalisation as a linear or deterministic pathway, the review highlights how mechanisms interact over time to shape vulnerability and divergent outcomes.
📚 Her recent work is centred on a large-scale systematic review of pathways toward youth radicalisation through violent extremism. Using a thematic synthesis approach, the review integrates evidence from qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method studies across Western contexts.
🏫 Lujia's research focuses on how and why young people become vulnerable to violent extremism, with a focus on the processes and social contexts through which radicalisation develops.
💡 CTRG researcher spotlight #2: Lujia Pei 💡
Lujia is a PhD student at UCL, who specialises in understanding youth radicalisation.
🔹 The CTRG team had their quarterly meetings with the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre and with Theseus Fixated Risk Management, where we discussed several upcoming and underway projects on fixated threats to public figures, corporate individuals, and others in the public eye.
🔹 We welcomed Leoni Heyn to the CTRG for the next few months as a visiting PhD student, where she will be continuing her work on online facilitators of offline violence
🔹 @caitlinclemmow.bsky.social also presented some work on lone actor terrorism to students from the Swedish Police Authority for Segerstedtinstitutet vid Göteborgs universitet
CTRG have had a busy start to 2026:
🔹 @caitlinclemmow.bsky.social presented her work on grievance-fuelled violence to the UK's Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service for their annual away day
🔜 Amber will be presenting updated research on unmet mental health needs at the Association of European Threat Assessment Professionals conference in April 2026. Details of programme and registration here: www.aetap.eu/next-confere...
👉 In her postdoctoral work, Amber continues to focus on these themes, collaborates regularly with practitioners including Theseus Fixated Risk Management and the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, supports many CTRG projects, and contributes to the research field through NABS+, IAPSS, and the CTRG.
👥 How targeted violence threat assessment is practically implemented across different regions and settings, to aid development of future teams. Published in an NCITE report: www.unomaha.edu/ncite/_files... and presented at NCITE’s 2024 conference: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcC-...
🏥 Unmet mental health needs, and their relevance to both violence prevention and safeguarding. Example study analysing Fixated Threat Assessment Centre data: doi.org/10.1080/1068...
🔍 Identifying risk factors for specific terrorist roles and behaviours (e.g. radicalisation, fundraising, logistical support, attack-planning) to aid threat and risk assessment of operationally relevant outcomes. Example study analysing Prevent data: doi.org/10.1111/1556...
Amber is a Research Fellow at UCL. Her existing research focuses on three practitioner-oriented themes:
🔹 CTRG researcher spotlight series 🔹
In 2026 we’ll be highlighting regular CTRG spotlights to showcase what our researchers are up to. Stay tuned for more throughout the year!
💡CTRG researcher spotlight #1: @amberseaward.bsky.social💡
In the new year we will be posting regular spotlights on individual CTRG members and their research. Watch this space!
Mary-Ann Cherry, Philip Doherty, Sara Rubini, Ance Martinsone, Lujia Pei, Emily Mayrand, Shu Jia Chee, Valia Panagiotaropoulou, Tom Thornton, & Ellie Wong.
Thank you to all CTRG researchers for their hard work this year: @paulgillucl.bsky.social, @noemiebouhana.bsky.social, @sandyschumann.bsky.social, @zoemarchment.bsky.social, @caitlinclemmow.bsky.social, @amberseaward.bsky.social