Dr Richard McNeil-Willson is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of terrorism and political violence at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), Leiden University. His work critically analyses the interplay between groups labelled "extremist" and counter-extremism legislation, as well as the impact of counterterrorism on democratic and human rights.

More information about Richard McNeil-Willson

Richard was formerly a Max Weber Fellow (2021–2022) and Research Associate (2019–2021) at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence (Italy). Currently working on the European Commission H2020-funded DRIVE project, Richard has also been Main Researcher for the H2020-funded Building Resilience against Violent Extremism and Polarisation (BRaVE) project, Project Co-instigator for the Erasmus+ project Counterterrorism and Safeguarding in response to Islamic State (CASIS) and advisor to numerous other European projects. He has conducted research directly for the European Commission on several project-based collaborations, developing policy responses with EU Member States to Far Right violence.

He holds a PhD from the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter (UK), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (2019), additional degrees from the universities of Edinburgh, Durham, and Exeter (UK), and visiting fellowships from the universities of Aarhus (Denmark) and Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy).