Md. Didarul Islam is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Leeds, UK as a Commonwealth Scholar.

He has been working on terrorism and counterterrorism for a long time and his research is largely based on empirical study.

His Doctoral study at the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds focuses on Framing Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policy.

Research interests

" My doctoral research is about framing CVE policy; i.e. how states frame CVE policy in different political settings. Under CVE policy, both preventative and re-integrative measures are studied. Many countries including Western and non-western have started de-radicalisation projects with a view to reducing recidivism and a cognitive and behavioural change. To counter extremism, Bangladesh has also a conflated policy. But how do they frame this policy? How do practitioners and security officials understand the causes of extremism? How do they frame a policy to address those causes? In my thesis, I will try to understand how Bangladesh in particular frames CVE policy by interviewing the policy makers and practitioners.

Apart from Terrorism and counterterrorism studies, I have deep interest in Religion and Politics, Secularism, Global Development, and Refugee studies. As a faculty member of the University of Dhaka, I worked in a few projects on Terrorism and its causes in Bangladesh. In those studies, I argued that extremism is not only a socially constructed crisis in Bangladesh but rather a global crisis of terrorism giving rise to an extremist wave in Muslim countries like Bangladesh. In addition, I have completed a project on the Rohingya Refugee Crisis ." ...

Quoted from his profile of the University of Leeds