Dr Jessica White is a Research Fellow in the Royal United Services Institute’s Terrorism and Conflict Research Group. Her expertise encompasses countering terrorism and violent extremism policy and programming and focuses on gender mainstreaming. She has worked on and helped manage multiple large EU CT policy shaping instruments, such as CT MORSE and the Radicalisation Awareness Network. She has also contributed to two comprehensive reviews of the evidence base for what works and what does not in preventing and countering violent extremism programming policy and practice.

Jessica has recently published on a range of topics, including gender in security, radical right extremism, and terrorism in the media. She also regularly participates on expert panels for international events and in the media. She has a decade’s worth of experience working on military and preventative approaches to counter-terrorism, with regional expertise in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. Jessica completed her PhD in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. Before beginning her PhD, she spent six years as an intelligence and language analyst in the United States Navy working on counter-terrorism.

Her recent publications include:

• “Systematic Literature Review of Effectiveness of CT and P/CVE Interventions Targeting Youth Engagement,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, 2021
• “Far-Right Extremism in the US: A Threat No Longer Ignored,” RUSI Commentary, 2021
• “Far-Right Extremism Steals the Show in 2020,” RUSI Commentary, 2020
• “Community and Gender in CT Policy: Challenges and Opportunities for Transferability Across the Evolving Threat Landscape,” International Centre for CT-The Hague (ICCT) Journal, 2020
• “Gender in P/CVE: Meaningful Inclusion of Policy in Practice,” CT MORSE Policy Brief, 2020
• “Gender in CVE Program Design, Implementation and Evaluation: Beyond Instrumentalism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2020
• “Terrorism and the Mass Media,” RUSI Paper, 2020
• “Gendered Implications: Highlighting the Unequal Impact of the Pandemic,” RUSI Commentary, 2020
• “The Far-Right and Coronavirus: Extreme Voices Amplified by the Global Crisis,” co-authored with Claudia Wallner, RUSI Commentary, 2020
• “Challenges to Gender Equality in the Security Sector,” RUSI Commentary, 2020
• “Far-Right Extremism: A Challenge to Current CT Strategies and Structures?” RUSI Newsbrief, 2020

Specialist research areas:

CT frameworks – including transferability across the threat landscape and transnational links of the radical right; preventing and countering violent extremism programme design, implementation, and evaluation – including constructions of radical right communities and the challenges presented to P/CVE; gender mainstreaming in CT policy; the dynamic relationships between gendered narratives and socially constructed gender roles and VE.

Available for consultation in the following areas:

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses and workshops; policy formation / reports; government consultancy; third sector / charity engagement; live / pre-recorded media interviews (including print, online, radio and television); and editorials