Dr Richard McNeil-Willson

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His previous positions include Research Fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Max Weber Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Dr McNeil-Willson holds a UK Research Council-funded PhD from the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and additional degrees from the universities of Edinburgh, Durham and Exeter. He has held several visiting positions, including a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Professorship at Charles University, Prague.

Dr McNeil-Willson has worked as lead researcher on two EU-wide European Commission Horizon-funded projects on political violence and counter-extremism – the BRaVE project (European University Institute) and the DRIVE project (Leiden University) – and has acted as advisor for the European Commission on EU responses to far-right violence. He is the editor (with Anna Triandafyllidou) of the Routledge Handbook of Violent Extremism and Resilience (2023), and of the forthcoming Routledge International Handbook of Radicalisation and Social Exclusion (with Tahir Abbas and Lianne Vostermans). His work has been published in several journals on the themes of European policy, Islamophobia and political violence, and he is the Managing Editor of the journal Mediterranean Politics.

Selected publications:

Articles

McNeil-Willson, R. (2021). Counter-terrorism and the repression of Islamic activism: Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain and Denmark. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 1-16.

McNeil-Willson, R. (2021). Resilience against Counterterrorism? The repression and response of Crimean Muslim activism against Russian counterterrorism and counter-extremism. Intersections, 7(4), 154-173.

Flonk, D., & McNeil-Willson, R. (2023). Watering down the wine: Problems with regulating far-right content in the EU. Policy & Internet.

Books and Book Chapters

McNeil-Willson, R., & Triandafyllidou, A. (2023). Routledge Handbook of Violent Extremism and Resilience. London: Routledge.

McNeil-Willson, R. (2021). Understanding the interplay of counter-extremism trends and Muslim communities in Europe. In S. Bonino & R. Ricucci (Eds.), Islam and Security in the West. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

McNeil-Willson, R., & Romaniuk, S. (2021). Counterterrorism has no Borders: Citizenship, Global Security Architectures and the Securitisation of Civil Society. In S. Romaniuk & E. T. Njoku (Eds.), Counter-terrorism and Civil Society: Post-9/11 Progress and Challenges. Manchester: Manchester University Press.