Congratulations to Dr. Domenico Galimi who passed his PhD viva yesterday. Domenico’s thesis is entitled, Evolutionary Narratives of Terrorism: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Red Brigades. What explains this evolution? Domenico’s development of the idea of a vector of change. He was supervised by Dr. Elizabeth Pearson, Prof. Ben O’Loughlin and Prof. Tom Dyson. His examiners were scholars of terrorism and counter-terrorism Dr. Elisa Orofino (Anglia Ruskin University) and Prof. Andrew Silke (Royal Holloway). We are also grateful to Dr. David La Rooy who was there at the crucial start of Domenico’s journey.
Abstract:
This research reconceptualizes terrorist groups as metaphorical organisms for the purposes of research, necessitating an evolutionary lens for comprehensive understanding. Drawing upon the foundational tenets of Critical Terrorism Studies and Narrative Criminology, the research innovatively expands upon Nikolas Tinbergen’s evolutionary framework. While Tinbergen's original model posed four behavioural questions, this research introduces a tailored framework of six, specifically crafted for the study of terrorist organizations. This metaphorical approach addresses a significant gap in the literature, offering a method uniquely suited to analysing the evolution and behaviour of terrorist groups. Through the case study of the Red Brigades, the research underscores the significance of not only evolutionary strategies, but the whys underlying them, in the persistence or decline of terrorist groups, providing a framework for further research applicable to both upcoming and retrospective terrorist groups. This thesis finds, first, that transdisciplinary evolutionary models can be successfully applied to terrorist organisations and at meso-level analysis; second, that, in contrast with the majority of accepted literature, the Red Brigades evolutionary capability was significantly more constrained beyond strong initial movements; third, that specific events, called Vectors of Evolutionary Change, were especially pivotal in changing said evolutionary trajectory, but were not recognised or emphasised as such by majority literature.