Professor Ben O'Loughlin - Director
Ben O’Loughlin is Professor of International Relations and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Committee on Soft Power and the UK's Influence. He is co-editor of the Sage journal Media, War and Conflict. In December 2013 Routledge in New York released the monograph: Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order. This is followed by an edited volume, Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations, to published by University of Michigan Press in 2016 and drawing together leading experts in communication and IR. His previous books include Radicalisation and Media: Terrorism and Connectivity in the New Media Ecology (2011) and War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War (2010). He has carried out projects on media and security for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. He has contributed to the New York Times, Guardian, openDemocracy, Sky News and Newsweek. Ben has recently completed a study of global responses to the 2012 London Olympics with the BBC, and is now beginning several EU-funded projects examining strategic narratives and public opinion in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine.
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Professor Joost van Spanje
Professor of Political Science at Royal Holloway University of London. His 10-person team investigates if and how the news media cover new parties, and electoral effects of such coverage in 19 countries since 1950. For the project, see www.newnewsproject.com. Joost has published about 50 SSCI-ranked journal articles as well as the 2018 monograph entitled Controlling the Electoral Marketplace: How Established Parties Ward Off Competition. In this book he argues, and shows empirically, that particular established parties’ tactics cost challenger parties votes, on average, in 15 countries since 1944. Joost previously conducted research at Waseda University (Tokyo), the EUI (Florence), the University of Oxford, and New York University. Invited talks he has given include lectures at WZB (Berlin), Oxford, Waseda, and Stanford. In recent years Joost has won individual research grants adding up to awards of over €3,000,000. In addition, his students nominated him for the 2017 and 2020 University of Amsterdam Lecturer of the Year Awards. Joost's media experience includes TV interviews given to Al Jazeera and France 24, and Australian, Brazilian, British, Canadian, Dutch, German, Italian, and US national news media.
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Dr James Sloam
James Sloam is Reader in Politics and International Relations. His research interests are: political parties, the role of new media in young people's democratic engagement, German politics, European social democracy. He is the coordinator of the Youth Politics Unit at Royal Holloway.
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Dr Yoav Galai
Yoav Galai joined Royal Holloway as Lecturer in Global Political Communication in 2018. Formerly a photojournalist, now an academic researching narrative politics, visual politics and collective memory. His editorial writing mostly appears in The Conversation and his academic writing was published in International Political Sociology, Memory Studies and Security Dialogue.
Dr Akil N. Awan
Akil N. Awan is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Political Violence and Terrorism at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is based in the Department of History. His research interests are focused around the history of terrorism, radicalization, social movements, protest, and new media. He has written widely in these areas, both academically and in the popular press. Dr Awan is also regularly consulted by government bodies, think-tanks, media and other organizations in his fields of expertise, and has served in an advisory capacity to the UK Home Office, the Foreign Office, the US State department, the US Military, Council of Europe, and the OSCE amongst others. Most recently, he served as special advisor on Radicalization to the UK Parliament; as academic expert on Genocide to the UK House of Lords delegation to Srebrenica; and as expert advisor on Youth Radicalisation to the United Nations. He is Founder and Chair of the UK Political Studies Association’s Specialist Group on Political Violence & Terrorism. His books include Radicalisation and Media: Terrorism and Connectivity in the New Media Ecology (Routledge, 2011), and Jihadism Transformed: al-Qaeda and Islamic State’s Global Battle of Ideas (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2016).
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