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Jacob Astley

ESRC NWSSDTP Postgraduate Research Student

Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology

j.w.astley@liverpool.ac.uk

Jacob Astley profile photograph with a circular crop

Biography

Jacob joined the University of Liverpool as an ESRC-funded (NWSSDTP) PhD student in October 2022. Prior to this, he worked as a research assistant on a broad range of international and national research projects, including those funded by the European Commission (Horizon 2020 DRIVE Project), Home Office (National County Lines Evaluation), National Independent Safeguarding Board Wales and Welsh Government (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Practice Evaluation). He holds a BA and MSc (University of Leicester) and a PGCE 14+ (University of Bolton), and while at the University of Leicester, was awarded the Arnold Wycombe Gomme Prize for the highest overall GPA in the BA cohort, and Best Student Prize for the highest overall GPA in the MSc cohort. 

As an educator, Jacob has taught as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Liverpool (SOCI320 The Risk Society) and Liverpool John Moores University (Quantitative research methods; Qualitative research methods; Criminological and sociological theory, Contemporary issues in criminology; Inside the criminal justice system). As a scholar, he has developed an international profile, delivering papers at conferences including the British Society of Criminology, European Society of Criminology and Nordic Conference on Violent Extremism, as well as authoring and co-authoring a number of journal articles and book chapters published in a range of high impact journals, including the British Journal of Educational Studies, Crime, Media, Culture, Critical Social Policy, and the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.

Research

Jacob's doctoral research is situated at the intersection of criminology and sociology, exploring how young people encounter and interpret extremist content within volatile digital ecologies, their offline experiences of stigmatisation, discrimination, and/or victimisation, and how these interactions shape their lived experiences of risk, belonging, and harm. His work contributes to an emergent field concerned with contemporary forms of extremism, with a focus on identity (trans)formation, belonging, meaning-making and youth socialisation as they intersect with contemporary radical(ising) pathways and journeys both on and offline.

In seeking to develop impactful research with ‘real-world’ relevance, he is particularly interested in exploring the processes and practices through which young people negotiate and make sense of normalised radical(ising) content amid shifting social worlds. This includes developing fresh and innovative methods and approaches to understand the multiple trajectories through which young people may – or may not – move toward violence or fixed ideological belief. Jacob's research also employs a critical lens to challenge dominant counter-terrorism and extremism paradigms that misdiagnose risk, pathologise ambiguity, and foreground rigid typologies that prioritise ideological categorisation over contextualisation. More broadly, he is interested in how contemporary extremist threats and harms are socially produced, the ways in which risk and vulnerability are presented and communicated by governments and macro institutions, and the resulting impacts and implications felt by individuals and communities across a variety of contexts.

Thesis title

‘Socialisation, Identity and Meaning-Making: Tracing the Journeys of Youth in the Shadow of Contemporary Extremism’.

Supervisors

Publications and presentations

  • Astley, J. (2025) Ideological idiosyncrasies and individual-level radicalisation pathways: unpacking the mutating dynamics of contemporary extremism. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 20(3), 380-398.

  • Astley, J. (2025) Breaking the binary: ‘mixed’ extremism and the contemporary UK landscape of radicalisation. In G. McLaughlin and A. Huber (Eds), Unravelling Radicalisation: Exploring Concepts, Contexts, and Perspectives. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 267-289.

  • Astley, J. and Mythen, G. (forthcoming) Explanatory factors in lone-actor terrorist attacks: social exclusion, online radicalisation and the concatenation effect. In T. Abbas, L. Vostermans and R. McNeil-Willson (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook on Social Exclusion and Radicalisation. London: Routledge.

  • Horton, J., Mythen, G. and Astley, J. (2025) Preventing and countering extremism in the educational sector: interrogating policy, challenging practices. Critical Social Policy. DOI: 10.1177/02610183251379386 

  • Mythen, G., Horton J. and Astley, J. (2025) Implementing safeguarding to counter extremism in the classroom: practicalities, practices and problematiques, British Journal of Educational Studies. DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2025.2537437

  • Naegler, L., Mythen, G. and Astley, J. (2025) The seductions and fallacies of misogynistic influencer culture: looking through the lens of social bulimia. Crime, Media, Culture. DOI: 10.1177/17416590251351446