Speaker: Dr Thomas Hegghammer (University of Oxford)
Abstract: The study of militant Islamism was long centered on either operational or ideological matters, but recent years have seen more attention paid to the cultural dimension of jihadism. Groups such as al-Qaida and Islamic State engage in a wide range of intriguing cultural practices with no obvious military application, such as poetry, music, dream interpretation, collective weeping, and other rituals. In this talk I will give an overview of the jihadi cultural universe and present new findings from my recent computational work on imagery in jihadi propaganda.
About Dr Thomas Hegghammer: Dr Thomas Hegghammer is a Senior Research Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, Oxford.
