When Brody McDonald first started studying armed groups as an undergraduate at the University of Victoria, ISIS had just swept across Iraq and Syria. Since then, ISIS’s rapid evolution into state actors has made informed policy responses a matter of urgency. This evolution would end up guiding Brody’s journey from the University of Victoria to the University of Oxford, where he is now doing a DPhil on how armed groups such as ISIS go about governing the land and populations under their control.
It wasn’t long after getting his BA that Brody found himself working in government as a Special Assistant to Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development. In addition to writing speeches, Brody’s role included formulating complex policy briefings. Alongside this, he was a researcher for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Genocide Prevention.
Working in government left little time to reflect deeply on policy decisions, leading Brody to pursue an MPhil at the University of Cambridge. At this time, he started volunteering with Stanford University’s ‘Mapping Militants’ Project which researches extremist recruiting, governance, and online communications. He was also selected as one of twelve Fellows with the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), working on preventing extremism programmes.
It was these experiences that convinced Brody to focus his career on researching conflict and extremism. So, he took the life-changing step of moving to Amman, Jordan to start conducting field research for a doctorate degree and studying Arabic while he was there. Brody’s research will definitely have an impact – shedding light on difficult issues troubling both policy makers and those on the ground. By gaining a deep understanding of how armed groups govern territory and exploit social divisions (and what makes rebels likely to succeed against competing rebel groups), effective countermeasures can be developed. Brody has, as one of his supervisors points out, an encyclopedic knowledge of the Syrian conflict.
This extensive knowledge is combined with a passion for disseminating what he has learned: Brody is undoubtedly a Canadian public intellectual in the making. He has been publishing his thoughts on armed groups and extremism for some time. From 2013-2014, he contributed articles to The Vancouver Sun and The NATO Council of Canada. In addition to helping with academic publishing as Chief Copy Editor of the St. Antony’s International Review Journal, Brody finds time to get involved in the wider academic community. He is currently an Associate Fellow at the Global Network on Extremism & Technology (King’s College), a think-tank established by Facebook and Twitter, where he focuses on the use of encrypted apps by extremists.
He already has big plans for what he will do after his doctorate. While working for the government, he saw how policy making often paid little attention to recent research. To improve information sharing, he plans to design a new platform to bring together Canadian scholars and policy makers working on peace and security, furthering Canada’s reputation as a leader in peacekeeping and conflict prevention.
– Awarded The Robert and Joline Brant Scholarship 2021-2022
