About IN-CTSS

The Iberian Network for Critical Terrorism and Security Studies (IN-CTSS) is a research community dedicated to fostering dialogue, exchange, and collaboration among scholars interested in critical approaches to terrorism and security. Based in the Iberian Peninsula but open to researchers worldwide, IN-CTSS provides a space where scholars at all stages — from master’s and doctoral students to postdoctoral and senior researchers — can meet, share ideas, and collectively imagine new directions for the field.

IN-CTSS seeks to promote reflection and cooperation across disciplines and institutions, supporting the development of innovative, critical, and reflexive perspectives on terrorism, counter-terrorism, and security practices. The network is grounded in the belief that studying these issues critically means not only analysing violence, security, and governance, but also interrogating the assumptions, power relations, and hierarchies that sustain them.

We welcome a wide range of critical traditions, including Constructivist, Post-structuralist, Feminist, Post/De-colonial, and Queer perspectives, as well as those inspired by Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) – and beyond. Together, we aim to build a plural, inclusive, and engaged community that challenges dominant understandings of terrorism, counter-terrorism and security, foregrounding questions of justice, responsibility, and knowledge production.

Our main research lines include:

– The study of different forms of non-state and state violence, with particular attention to practices of counter-terrorism.

– The analysis of discourses and practices of security, and how these shape political, social, and institutional realities.

– The exploration of how security and power intersect with social and global hierarchies, including racialised, gendered, classist, and colonial dimensions.

– The examination of how discourses and practices of technological developments reconfigure the exercise of power, surveillance, and security governance.

– The pursuit of innovative ways of teaching terrorism, counter-terrorism, and security through critical, reflexive, and engaged pedagogies.

IN-CTSS is more than a network: it is a collaborative project to re-imagine how we study and talk about terrorism, counter-terrorism and security, and to cultivate collective spaces for dialogue, solidarity, and transformation.