Education
Ranstorp graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota in 1985.
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Magnus Ranstorp
Edit Profilescholars contributor Director of Centre
Career
He is the Research Director of the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College, directing a project on Strategic Terrorist Threats to Europe which focuses on radicalisation and recruitment of salafist-jihadist terrorists across Europe and the convergence between Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Weapons and Terrorism. He is the author of Hizballah in Lebanon as well as several articles and monographs on terrorism and counter-terrorism. In 2003 he was invited to testify before the first hearing of the 9/11 Commission.
In 2005 he was a contributor to the George C. Marshall Center directed project on "Ideological War on Terror: Synthesizing Strategies Worldwide" (funded by the Office of the United States Secretary of Defense).
In 2006 Ranstorp was invited to join the European Commission Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation, an official advisory body on all matters relating to violent radicalisation and recruitment of extremists within the European Union. During the early stages of the 22 July 2011 terror attacks in Norway, Ranstorp claimed that the attacks could only have been the work of a network of al-Qaeda operatives, something which was later shown to be false, as the attacks were in fact carried out by a lone, white supremacist perpetrator.
Politics
He was previously the Director of Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of Street Andrews, Scotland. He is on the international editorial advisory board of the academic journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and on the editorial boards of two newly launched peer-reviewed journals published by Taylor & Francis: Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict and Critical Studies on Terrorism.
Membership
He was a member of an Advisory Panel on Terrorism in Europe advising the European Union counter-terrorism coordinator.
