ABSTRACT
Terrorism studies was once a relatively minor specialist subfield of security studies and international relations. Today, it exhibits all the characteristics of a major stand-alone academic field, having its own: dedicated scholarly journals (Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and more recently, Critical Studies on Terrorism); graduate and post-graduate teaching and research programmes at most major universities in America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific; a growing number of dedicated research centres and think tanks; a coterie of widely recognised scholars and experts; regular academic conferences; and an accepted body of literature, including a number of widely cited core texts.2
