Killing Strangers – How Violence Became Modern

Every time we travel by plane or on underground trains, official announcements remind us that total strangers might slaughter us – how did we get here?

That’s the theme of a startling fresh look at the origins of our contemporary terrorism crisis in a lecture to mark the official launch of the 25th anniversary of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St Andrews.

The oldest research centre on terrorism in Europe, CSTPV has over the past 25 years consistently remained at the forefront of cutting-edge research into the causes and consequences of political violence. It has built both a global reputation and close links with ‘practitioner’ communities, whilst rigorously retaining its academic independence.

To mark this quarter century, CSTPV Director Tim Wilson will deliver a keynote lecture which seeks to shed light on how we have come to live in these terrorism-dominated times.

Dr Wilson said:

“Such a state of affairs has come to seem normal in the early 21st century. But in any longer term perspective it is not. We live in weird times.

“It is only when we look back over 250 years that we can see how political violence has grown into a generalised threat that menaces everyone. We need to ask a simple, but difficult, question: How on earth did we get here?”