Joana Cook

Dr. Joana Cook is an Assistant Professor of Terrorism and Political Violence at Leiden University, where she is also the Editor-in-Chief of the journal at the International Center for Counterterrorism (ICCT the Hague), and a senior project manager. She sits on the editorial boards of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence and the series “Studies in Contemporary Warfare,” with IB Tauris (Bloomsbury). Her research more broadly focuses on women in violent extremism, countering violent extremism, and counter-terrorism practices. Her first book, A Woman’s Place: US Counterterrorism Since 9/11 (Oxford University Press 2020) examined women in relation to post-9/11 U.S. counterterrorism responses in Yemen and the wider MENA region.

Dr. Cook is also a Research Affiliate with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS), and a Digital Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), Concordia University. She was formerly a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, and a Research Associate in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. She has also worked with Public Safety Canada’s Research Affiliate Program (Kanishka); as Editor-in-Chief of Strife based out of the Department; and as a journalist in Canada and southern Africa.

She has presented her research to senior government and security audiences in a number of countries and at institutions such as the UN Security Council, NATO, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Oxford, and Cambridge. She has also been featured in media such as Time, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and on BBC World News, CNN, Sky News, BBC Radio, the National Post, and CBC. In May 2019 she did her first TEDx talk on women in security today.

She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Regina, an M.A. in Conflict, Security and Development, and a Ph.D. in War Studies (both from King’s College London). In 2016 she was a recipient of the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund (CCSF).

Her research interests include women in security (policy and practice); gender and security; terrorism and counterterrorism; extremism and countering violent extremism (CVE).