Dr. Michael Loadenthal serves as an Assistant Professor of Research in the School of Public and International Affairs, at the University of Cincinnati. He also serves as the Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (Georgetown University), the Executive Director of the Prosecution Project, and a open-source investigator and social movement trainer. Michael has served as a professor of political violence, terrorism, social movements, and sociology at Georgetown University, George Mason University, Miami University, University of Cincinnati, University of Malta’s Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies, the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Jessup Correctional Institution, and the DC Jail. Michael has served as the Dean’s Fellow for George Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (2011-2015), a Senior Research Associate with the Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution (2021), a Practitioner-In-Residence for Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice (2014-2016), a Research Fellow at Hebrew Union College’s Center for the Study of Ethics & Contemporary Moral Problems (2014-2017), and a Research Team Lead for Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative (2022-2024). Michael holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University, focusing his dissertation on a discursive, linguistic and strategic investigation of clandestine, insurrectionary politics.
The project is based around developing an anti-securitization framework for understanding the communicative power of the communique, and was published with Manchester University Press’ series on Contemporary Anarchist Studies, under the title, “The Politics of Attack.” Michael also holds a master’s degree in Terrorism Studies from the Centre for the Study of Terrorism & Political Violence (University of St. Andrews, Scotland), focusing his dissertation on a mixed-method exploration of clandestine direct action and economic sabotage. In 2006, Michael received a dual BA in International Peace & Conflict Resolution, and Women & Gender Studies (American University, Washington, DC). Michael has published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and given hundreds of presentations and workshops worldwide focused on political violence, social movements, terrorism, policing, technology, security and the law, and his research has involved ethnographic research with North American abortion providers, Jamaican Rastafarians, indigenous Mexican revolutionaries, British “eco-terrorists”, Palestinian guerrillas and a host of others.
This work has involved global ethnographies, quantitative linguistic and discourse studies, large dataset statistical analyses, action-orientated reflexive analysis, and technical reviews. He has also completed security and risk analyses for technology companies, social movement organizations, and conflict practitioners, authoring dozens of technical, and socio-political threat models. Michael’s writing has been published in a variety of venues including Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, the Journal of Terrorism Research, Journal of Applied Security Research, Global Society, Fletcher Security Review, Radical Criminology, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Theory in Action, Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Journal of Critical Animal Studies, Juniata Voices, Glocalism, Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, and the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, which described his work as “the cutting edge of movement Studies” (2016, 10:2; 5). His most recent single-authored book, The Politics of Attack (Manchester University, 2017), investigates contemporary, clandestine networks of insurrectionary anarchists and the development of the communique.
He has also co-edited The Routledge History of World Peace since 1750 (2018), From Environmental Loss to Resistance (University of Massachusetts, 2020), and Prosecuting Political Violence (Routledge, 2021), a book collaboratively written by more than a dozen tPP student team members. In addition, Michael serves editorial and directorship roles for several projects including Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements, Journal for the Study of Radicalism, and Peace and Conflict Studies Journal.
