ABSTRACT
Over the past thirty years, a small but politically-significant academic field of ‘terrorism studies’ has emerged from the relatively disparate research efforts of the 1960s and 1970s, and consolidated its position as a viable subset of ‘security studies’ (Reid, 1993: 22; Laqueur, 2003: 141). Despite continuing concerns that the concept of ‘terrorism’, as nothing more than a specific socio-political phenomenon, is not substantial enough to warrant an entire field of study (see Horgan and Boyle, 2008), it is nevertheless possible to identify a core set of scholars writing on the subject who together constitute an ‘epistemic community’ (Haas, 1992: 2-3). That is, there exists a ‘network of knowledge-based experts’ who have ‘recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain’. This community, or ‘network of productive authors’, has operated by establishing research agendas, recruiting new members, securing funding opportunities, sponsoring conferences, maintaining informal contacts, and linking separate research groups (Reid, 1993, 1997). Regardless of the largely academic debate over whether the study of terrorism should constitute an independent field, the existence of a clearly-identifiable research community (with particular individuals at its core) is a social fact.2
