The Terrorism Research Center in Fulbright College was founded by Dr. Brent L. Smith in 2003 to facilitate research on terrorism, extremist violence, and effectiveness of anti-terrorism policies and programs. The TRC honors J.W. Fulbright’s legacy of “Peace Through Education” by conducting research that informs the work of those who seek to counter terrorism and other forms of extreme violence.

The TRC is home to the American Terrorism Study (ATS), the nation’s longest-running research project on domestic terrorism in the United States. The project provides a comprehensive record of persons indicted in federal court as a result of FBI terrorism investigations. The ATS has been primarily funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the last two decades to study geospatial and temporal patterns of terrorist activity in the United States and prosecutorial, defense, and investigation strategies utilized in terrorism cases.

Dr. Jeff Gruenewald became the Director of the TRC in 2019. That same year, the Bias Homicide Database (BHDB) became one of the TRC’s signature projects. The BHDB is an open-source, relational database that includes information on incident, victim, and offender attributes of bias homicide in the United States from 1990 to 2019.

In 2020, the TRC introduced the Crime and Security Data Analytics Lab (CASDAL), led by Associate Director Grant Drawve. CASDAL promotes multidisciplinary research projects relating to crime and security issues, research partnerships in areas of crime and security with private and public agencies and offers training to students in areas and methodologies of crime analysis.