Volkan Topalli is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He received his PhD in Experimental Social Psychology from Tulane University in 1998. Previous to arriving at Georgia State University (GSU) in 2000 he completed a National Science Foundation research fellowship through the National Consortium on Violence Research. He also holds faculty associate status with the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Group at GSU, the Partnership of Urban Health Research at GSU, the Center for Injury Control at Emory University, and the International Centre for Research on Forensic Psychology at Portsmouth University, United Kingdom. His scholarly research addresses decision-making of offenders with a focus on violence in urban settings. To pursue these interests he employs a multi-method approach that includes experimental, quantitative, and qualitative (interview-based) approaches with active, noninstitutionalized hardcore street offenders (robbers, carjackers, drug dealers). He has conducted roughly 400 interviews with offenders in New Orleans, St. Louis, and Atlanta over the past 22 years. His work has recently expanded this agenda to the study of emerging forms of crime and future crime, including the role of emerging technologies and exponential technological change. His research has been supported by such agencies as the National Science Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, The Centers for Disease Control, The UK Home Office, and the National Institute of Justice. He the author of peer-reviewed research in such outlets as Criminology, The Annual Review of Criminology, Justice Quarterly, The Journal of Quantitative Criminology, The British Journal of Criminology, The Journal of Law and Economics, and Criminal Justice & Behavior. Dr. Topalli is the current co-lead editor of Criminology.
John Horgan is a Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University’s Department of Psychology where he also directs the Violent Extremism Research Group (VERG). Professor Horgan is one of the world’s leading experts on terrorist psychology. His work is widely published, with books including The Psychology of Terrorism (now in its second edition and published in over a dozen languages worldwide), Divided We Stand: The Strategy and Psychology of Ireland’s Dissident Terrorists; Walking Away from Terrorism, Leaving Terrorism Behind, and Terrorism Studies: A Reader. He is an Editor of the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, Consulting Editor of American Psychologist, Contributing Editor of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and serves on the Editorial Boards of several additional publications including Politics and the Life Sciences, Legal and Criminological Psychology, Journal for Deradicalization, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict and Journal of Strategic Security. He is a member of the Research Working Group of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. He has held positions at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell), Penn State, University of St. Andrews, and University College, Cork. Professor Horgan’s research has been featured in such venues as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, PBS, NPR, Vice News, Rolling Stone Magazine, TIME, Nature, Scientific American and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Professor Horgan’s latest book, Terrorist Minds, was published by Columbia University Press in 2022.