A Brief History of the Journal

Perspectives on Terrorism was founded in 2007 as a fully open-source scholarly journal for the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism by members of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), a consortium headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The three founding members of TRI are Prof. em. Alex Schmid, Prof. James Forest, and Robert Wesley, the president of TRI and CEO of KIVU Technologies. With sixteen research institutions and more than 120 individual scholars from more than 30 countries in its ranks, TRI was one of first large research consortia in the field of Terrorism Studies.

In late 2016, TRI entered into a partnership with the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) at Leiden University, which provided a new institutional home for the journal. In January 2023, TRI released ownership of the journal completely to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague, Netherlands. ICCT decided to create a strong academic partnership around the journal, with the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) at Leiden University, and the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St. Andrews. All three of these organisations contribute to the journal’s editorial process. 

Robert Wesley served as the first Editor of the journal. In August 2009, Prof. em. Alex Schmid took on the role as Editor-in-Chief, with support from a small team of Assistant Editors. Prof. James Forest joined Perspectives on Terrorism as Co-Editor in 2012. In January 2023, Prof. Forest took on the role of Editor-in-Chief.