Dr Lewys Brace
Senior Lecturer
Criminology
Lewys Brace is a Senior Lecturer in Computational Social Science. He specialises in data science, machine learning/AI, extremism, terrorism, cyber-crime/cyber-threats, and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is the Co-Director of the University of Exeter's Centre for Computational Social Science (C2S2), programme coordinator for the MSc Security and Data Science, part of the University of Exeter's renowned Defence, Security, and Resiliance (DSR) Research Network, and is part of the leadership team for VOX-Pol; a world-leading research network on online extremism and terrorism.
His research focuses on emerging extremist and terrorist threats, as well as the advancement of computational research methods for the social sciences. His work has appeared in journals such as Terrorism and Political Violence, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, and Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.
He can be found on BlueSky @lewysbrace.bsky.social.
Lewys' funded projects include:
- Principle Investigator - The HARDGORE Project: Understanding the structure, content, and dynamics of gore websites and their overlap with ideological extremist online spaces - funded via the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST).
- Principle Investigator - The Con.Cel Project: Tracking the online contagion of incel and male supremacist ideology - funded via the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST).
- Co-Investigator - The MineChans Project: Exposing the visual and linguistic dynamics of radicalisation in far-right imageboards - funded via the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST).
Research supervision:
Lewys supervises students who are interested in studying extremism/terrorism, cyber-threats, and issues pertaining to technology and behaviour. He is especially interested in supervising projects that employ natural language processing (NLP) and other computational research methods.
Current PhD Students:
Past PhD Students: