Researcher
Rita Augestad Knudsen
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Summary
Rita Augestad Knudsen is a Senior Researcher at NUPI’s research group for Security and Defence. She currently works especially on counterterrorism, in particular prevention, as well as cyber, and on the intersection between political and legal discourse on different aspects of international security. She is the managing director of the Consortium for Terrorism Research and affiliated with C-REX (Centre for Research on Extremism, University of Oslo)
Rita Augestad Knudsen’s publications include current and historical analyses of terrorism-related risk assessment, mental health, criminal responsibility legislation and frameworks, legal/political discourse and ideational formation on various issues of international security, including radicalization, self-determination, freedom, international sanctions and international statebuilding. Geographically, her main focus is the UK (including Scotland), as well as other parts of Europe.
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Fra arkivet: 20 år etter 11. september
Vi ser nærmere på utviklingen de 20 årene som har gått etter 11. september 2001.Dette er et opptak av et NUPI-seminar som ble holdt i regi av Kons...
Research on radicalisation and countering radicalisation: Taking stock and ways forward
The Consortium for Terrorism Research invites you to a seminar about research on radicalisation and countering radicalization, with Joel Busher and Sarah Marsden.
Mental health exemptions to criminal responsibility - between law, medicine, politics and security
Ill mental health is a key category for exempting individuals from criminal responsibility. Even in cases where a defendant has been found to have carried out the act, if mentally ‘ill enough’, the person could either be fully exempt from criminal responsibility and found not guilty – or be partially exempt and receive a reduced or special sentence on mental health grounds. Such outcomes might entail diversion into mental health treatment, sectioning – or release. In determining whether a mental health exemption is warranted in individual cases, ordinary practice is that psychologists or psychiatrists forensically assess the severity and nature of the accused’s impairment or disorder. While this might seem like a straightforward medical-juridical procedure of establishing evidence, this article uses a modified ‘genealogy of the present’ to show how mental health exemptions to criminal responsibility involve significantly more complexity. Looking to Norway and the UK, this article highlights differences in frameworks and implementation, including on matters of burden and nature of proof, and on causality. The article uses as an example the particular category of terrorism-related cases to bring out some of the contingencies involved. By doing so, the article shows the tensions inherent to the principle and practice of mental health exemptions, and its location between law, medicine, politics and security.
Algorethics: Responsible governance of artificial intelligence
How can we develop artificial intelligence ethically?
Naturalisation through mainstreaming Counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation in UN and EU discourse
In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, counter-terrorism was initially pursued throughout the world as a matter of exceptional ‘hard security’. International and national authorities generally position terrorism as a uniquely threatening phenomenon warranting delineated budgets, systems, and structures within the law enforcement and defence realms. However, with the growing focus on radicalisation as assumedly essential in leading to terrorism and counter-radicalisation as an ever more central part of counter-terrorism, its scope was expanded far beyond the ‘hard security’ field; counter-radicalisation enabled the growth and integration of counter-terrorism into ‘softer’ societal sectors. This chapter argues that this shift from a hard security framing of counter-terrorism to a broadening of its scope through a foregrounding of counter-radicalisation should be conceptualised as a process of ‘mainstreaming’. After explaining the concept of mainstreaming and how it captures this development, the chapter offers a brief discourse analysis of such mainstreaming through the lens of key official UN and EU counter-terrorism documents. On the basis of this investigation, the chapter finds that the discursive mainstreaming of counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation suggests their ‘naturalisation’.
Vad är frihet?
”Frihet” är på allas läppar i dagens offentliga samtal – och lyfts då särskilt som ett värde som tillhör den politiska högern. Rita Augestad Knudsen tar i den här artikeln sin utgångspunkt i Lea Ypis bok Fri. En uppväxt vid historiens slut, och läser den som ett möjligt bidrag till debatten. Augestad Knudsen diskuterar hur Ypis bok kan förstås som ett försök att flytta frihetsbegreppet närmare den politiska vänstern, och att säga något om vad frihet innebär som ett politiskt värde idag. Författaren tar också upp hur boken fungerar som text och litteratur, med tonvikt på de idéer om frihet som framträder i den, och hur den skildrar Albaniens nära förflutna ”vid historiens slut” och övergången från auktoritär kommunism till marknadskapitalism. Trots att Fri är både spännande och intressant läsning så uppfyller den tyvärr inte fullt ut sina implicita löften om att utveckla dagens politiska frihetsdiskurs.
Why Terrorism Researchers Should Care about Criminal Responsibility
Criminal responsibility is a basic principle in holding individuals to account for criminal actions. Making exemptions to criminal responsibility when individuals cannot be held responsible for their actions is equally central, and most countries have frameworks allowing for such exemptions for reasons of serious mental health problems. However, despite the recent years’ enormous interests in the possible links between individual ‘mental health’ and involvement in terrorism, the issue of criminal responsibility has apparently so far not been the subject of much interest in the field of terrorism research. This Research Note makes the simple point that criminal responsibility should be of particular interest to terrorism researchers, for two main reasons: the centrality of (political, religious, ideological) motivations for defining a crime as terrorism-related and the sometimes-difficult boundary-setting between such motivations and (psychotic) delusions; and the political nature of terrorism-related crimes.
Mental health and radicalization
The possible relationship between mental health and radicalization, extremism and terrorist involvement has received a lot of attention recently. But what do we really know about this relationship?
Psykisk helse, terrorisme, ekstremisme og radikalisering
The possible connection between mental health, radicalisation, extremism, and involvement of terror has received a lot of attention as of late. But what do we really know about this connection? What are we unaware of, and how can challenges related to this be handled? This policy brief goes through these questions and gives the knowledge status in this domain a clean-up.
Cyber security, knowledge and practices (CYKNOW)
CYKNOW will promote better understanding of cyber security, as well as develop novel theoretical and methodological tools for cybersecurity research in particular....