Dr Julia Ebner
About
Dr Julia Ebner is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Calleva Centre for Evolution and Human Science at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College), the Leader of the Violent Extremism Lab at Oxford's Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, where she has led projects on online radicalisation, terrorism, conspiracy myths and hatespeech.
Dr Ebner is also an award-winning and internationally bestselling author of several books, including The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists and Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over.
Based on her research, she has given evidence to numerous governments, as well as advised intelligence agencies, tech firms and international organisations such as the UN, Europol and NATO. Dr Ebner has written for media outlets such as The Guardian, Financial Times, The Washington Post and Süddeutsche Zeitung and regularly gives public talks and guest lectures at universities in the UK, Europe and the United States.
Dr Ebner holds a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford and a dual Msc from Peking University and the London School of Economics.
(Photo credit: Helena Lea Manhartsberger)
Watch online:
Julia Ebner receives the Open Society Prize at Central European University: Global Optiver Academy Program (youtube.com)
Expertise
- Terrorism
- Radicalisation
- Extremism
- Political violence
- Conspiracy myths
- Disinformation
- Far-right
- QAnon
Selected publications
- Going Mainstream: How Extremists Are Taking Over (Ithaka Press/Bonnier Books, 2023)
- "Measuring socio-psychological drivers of extreme violence in online terrorist manifestos: an alternative linguistic risk assessment model", Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism (2023)
- “Identity and Extremism: Sorting out the causal pathways to radicalization and violent self-sacrifice”, The Routledge Handbook on Radicalization and Countering Radicalization (Routledge, 2023)
- "Assessing Violence Risk among Far-Right Extremists: A New Role for Natural Language Processing", Terrorism and Political Violence (2023)
- "Is There a Language of Terrorists? A Comparative Manifesto Analysis", Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (2022)
- "The QAnon Security Threat: A Linguistic Fusion-Based Violence Risk Assessment", Perspectives on Terrorism Vol. 16(6) (2022)
- Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists (Bloomsbury, 2020)
- The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)
Media experience
Dr Julia Ebner has written for media outlets such as the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, New Statesman, The Washington Post, Wired, Prospect and Süddeutsche Zeitung and featured in national flagship broadcast programmes (including BBC's Woman’s Hour, Newsnight, Panorama, Today, and File on 4, Channel 4 Dispatches, ARD Tagesschau, ZDF Heute Journal) and documentaries in the UK, US, Germany and beyond.
Recent media work
- How to read a riot (Financial Times, 2024)
- The evolution of Britain’s extreme right (The Economist, 2024)
- Inside the Riots (BBC Radio 4, 2024)
- World at One: What is social media's role in the riots? (BBC Radio 4, 2024)
- ‘A polarisation engine’: how social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots (The Guardian, 2024)
- A Dangerous New Home for Online Extremism (Wired, 2024)
- Woman's Hour (BBC Radio 4, 2023)
- The big idea: is it too late to stop extremism taking over politics? (The Guardian, 2023)
Languages
English, German, French (fluent); Spanish, Mandarin, Dutch (intermediate understanding)