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PhD, PhD - researcher and analyst, Edith Cowan University

Dr. Robyn Torok is a highly experienced researcher, obtaining her first PhD in education investigating how power is used within organizations, along with the notion of surveillance and governing of workers and its impacts upon the organisation.

Dr. Torok has submitted a second PhD for examination, investigating how psychiatric power, and forms of propaganda are used in the on-line radicalization process of recruitment to jihad, radical ideology and extremism.

The focus of Dr. Torok's research explores the way in which social media is being used by jihadists as a form of an institution to govern behaviour of Australian recruits to acts of martyrdom in the West and abroad.

Dr. Torok’s second PhD in Security Science is leading the way in Australia and worldwide in understanding, as well as, developing new models and cutting edge mechanisms on how terrorists use social media to spread extremists propaganda, recruit, radicalize, and encourage a radical form of Islam that endorses not just recruits, but martyrs and lone-wolf operations in the West.

Dr. Torok's research includes: on-line radicalization, counter-terrorism, lone-wolf terrorism, countering on-line terrorist propaganda, policy, intelligence, combating terrorist use of the internet, eschatology and the impacts upon terrorist radicalisation, narratives, national security, Islamic state ideology, and Middle East Affairs.

Academic Awards and Honours:

* Valedictorian A.M.D.C., Melbourne, 1991
* Best Performing Student Women in Research/Best Performing Honours (PhD/Master entry), CQU, 2004
* Dean's Award for Academic Excellence in a Master’s Program, USQ, 2005
* Dean's Commendation for Outstanding Achievement, USQ, 2005

Scholarships/Bursaries:

* CQ Bursary, 2004
* APA scholarship EdD GU, 2007
* Southern Queensland University Scholarship PhD, 2007
* ISATT Bursary - PhD Conference Finland, 2009
* Macquarie University Scholarship MQRES PhD, 2010
* Edith Cowan University Scholarship ECUPGS PhD, 2011
* AMP Technology on Tap - participant finalist award $2, 000, 2011

Experience

  • –present
    Researcher on social media and online radicalisation, Edith Cowan University

Education

  • 2016 
    Edith Cowan University, PhD
  • 2010 
    University of Southern Queensland, PhD

Publications

  • 2016
    Rapid recruitment response: Arise, stay and die - Shedding halal blood of the kufr in hometowns, neighbourhoods and cities, SRI
  • 2015
    Article: Youth Intervention Strategies: Introducing Control Orders in Australia in light of lessons from South East Asia, Asialink Echo
  • 2015
    Article: Messages of terror were spread on social media ahead of the Paris attack, The Conversation
  • 2015
    Book Chapter (forthcoming): A Pragmatic approach to the on-line risk assessment of violent extremists , IGI Global
  • 2015
    Book Chapter (forthcoming): The role of women from a social media jihad perspective: Wife or Warrior?, IGI Global
  • 2015
    Journal: ISIS and the Institution of online terrorist recruitment , Middle East Institute
  • 2015
    Article (forthcoming): Islamic States' future pacing techniques: recruiting Australian's to acts of terrorism on home-soil {Part 2}, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2015
    Article: How are Western youth conditioned to commit terrorist acts? , The Conversation
  • 2015
    Paper (forthcoming): Institutionalised Moral Reframing: a Research Based Model on Islamic Radicalisation on Social Media, SRI
  • 2015
    Paper (forthcoming): Symbiotic Radicalisation Strategies: Propaganda Tools and Neuro Linguistic Programming, SRI
  • 2015
    Paper (forthcoming): Formation of the radical self: constructs of change in Western youth to acts of terrorism on home-soil, SRI
  • 2015
    Article (forthcoming): Islamic States' future pacing techniques: recruiting Australian's to acts of terrorism on home-soil {Part 1}, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2015
    Article: Terrorists use marketing skills to attract new recruits online, The Conversation
  • 2015
    Article: Social media as central to terrorist recruitment, Communication Director
  • 2015
    Article: Terror group’s social media ploy edges out rivals, wins recruits, The Conversation
  • 2014
    Article: Syrian recruitment: The battle for hearts and minds {Part 1}, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2014
    Article: Syrian recruitment: The battle for hearts and minds {Part 2}, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2014
    Book Chapter: Using a visual method of ethno-symbology to elucidate participant voice, Sense
  • 2013
    Paper: The Syrian Calling: Western jihad recruitment and martyrdom, SRI Security Research Institute
  • 2013
    Journal: Developing an explanatory model for the process of on-line radicalisation and terrorism, Security Informatics
  • 2013
    Article: Explaining online radicalisation, Extremis Project
  • 2012
    Paper: Al-Jihad Fi Sabilillah: in the heart of green birds, SRI Security Research Institute
  • 2011
    Conference Paper: The on-line institution: psychiatric power as an explantory model for the normalisation of radicalisation and terrorism, EISIC
  • 2011
    Book Chapter (e-book): Managing the Mapuche: security and identity collisions in Chile, Mellen Press
  • 2011
    Article (co-author): Social Media – Radical Islamists seek influence at CHOGM 2011, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2011
    Paper: Bin Laden’s formation of the self: a comparative analysis, SRI Security Research Institute
  • 2011
    Paper: Facebook jihad: A case study of recruitment discourses and strategies targeting a Western female , SRI Security Research Institute
  • 2011
    The 9/11 Commission Report and the reframing of the 'war on terror' as a new type of warfare, JPICT
  • 2011
    Book: Schooling in the name of God: Teachers' Perspectives, Lambert Academic Publishers
  • 2011
    Article: Addressing emerging cyber threats, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2011
    Article: Social media as a pivotal tool for the propagation of Islamic extremism and terrorism, Australian Security Magazine
  • 2010
    Paper: “Make A Bomb In Your Mums Kitchen”: Cyber Recruiting And Socialisation of ‘White Moors’ and home grown jihadists, SRI Security Research Institute
  • 2009
    Conference Presentation: Understanding the instruments and rationalities of governmentality in Australia: The case of the public verse private school debate, UQ
  • 2009
    Conference Presentation: Using the concept of governmentality as a framework for examining pedagogical context and challenges in the 21st Century, ISATT
  • 2009
    Conference Presentation: Constructing professional identity: an autoethnographic case study on how games of truth and technologies of the self form professional identity of teachers within an educational system, ISATT
  • 2009
    Conference Presentation: Governmentality of US-Chile relations from 1973 to the present: successes and discontents analysed through regimes of truth and technologies of the self, IPSA
  • 2007
    Conference Presentation: The increased contextualisation of curriculum and its associated pedagogies, ICPL
  • 2007
    Paper: The re-historicisation and the increased contextualisation of curriculum and its associated pedagogies, IJPL
  • 2005
    Paper: propositional vs. practical knowledg: exploring the metaphors and images of pre-service teachers, IJPL