October 15, 2014

expert encounter: why are young people born in the UK attracted to supporting terrorism?

As one set of parents continue to issue heartfelt pleas to their daughter to come back from Syria, politicians and community leaders struggle to understand why young people would be tempted to leave comfortable secure homes and travel to war zones to lend support to a variety of fighting groups.  Few people in the UK can give answers but one academic is attempting to understand the roots of radicalisation and psychology behind it, so we may begin to take a public health approach and prevent it before it happens.

Professor Kam Bhui is an extremely eminent and widely respected psychiatrist who has published over 150 papers and 10 books. He has in recent years turned his attentions to the psychology of radicalisation and came to the SMC to share previous findings and observations from his current work specifically looking into young women and radicalisation.

Speaker:

Prof Kam Bhui, Professor of Cultural Psychiatry and Epidemiology, Queen Mary University of London