Lella Nouri

Associate Professor, Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy, Swansea University
Lella Nouri is an Associate Professor of Criminology and the Co-Director of the University’s Cyber Threats Research Centre (CYTREC). Lella is also a Co-Director of the 7.5m EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Enhanced Human Interactions and Collaborations with Data and Intelligence Driven Systems.

Lella’s research specialism is in extremism, terrorist use of the internet and in particular extreme right ideologies as well as hate crime.

Lella’s most recent work focuses on combatting hate visuals in communities across Wales. Lella is the inventor of the innovative ‘StreetSnap’ app, which was developed in collaboration with the Legal Innovation Lab Wales and Bridgend Community Safety Partnership. Lella also runs a community impact project in relation to anti-hate crime, Flip the Streets, which helps communities to build resilience to hate.

Alongside this Lella has researched widely on extremist use of the internet including far and extreme right narratives, their dissemination via social media and provided recommendations for policy and community responses.

As well as co-organising numerous community and academic events on these topics, including a VOX-Pol extreme right workshop, Lella has published a variety of edited collections, journal articles, book chapters, research reports and blogs through leading publishers in the field.

Stakeholder and community impact and engagement work is at the heart of her research. Lella’s has most recently been appointed as an Anti-Racist Wales Research Expert for the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan as part of the External Accountability Group. She is also an active member of the following expert groups/networks: Academic-Practitioner Counter Extremism Network (APCEN) for the Commission for Counter Extremism (UK Home Office), Member of the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) Research Network, Homeland Security Group at the UK Home Office as well as the UK Counter-Terrorism Policing Evidence-Based Review Group. In 2017/18, Lella held a visiting scholar position at the University of California, Santa Barbara on a Fulbright Cyber Security Award.

Lella is also keen to work university wide and is currently one of the University’s Morgan Advanced Studies Institute Fellows and Co-Chair of the University’s Race Equality Network (SIREN).

AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Counter-terrorism
Extreme right
Terrorist use of the internet
Radicalisation

Lella has received the following accolades in recent years:
2023 Winner of the Social and Humanitarian Achievement Award - Ethnic Minority Welsh Women Achievement Association (EMWWAA)
2017/18 Fulbright Cyber Security Scholar Award - Visiting scholar position at the University of California, Santa Barbara
R&I Rising Star, Early Career Winner in the 2018 Swansea University Research and Innovation Awards
Inspiring Woman Award for Swansea University's International Women’s Day 2017 celebrations
The Cyberterrorism Research Project was the winner of the Outstanding Research Collaboration Award at the 2016 Swansea University Research and Innovation Awards
She successfully applied for a place on the CHERISH-DE Digital Economy Early Career Researchers Crucible Programme in 2016
Runner Up in the Research Impact Awards (Outstanding Contribution to Law and Public Policy) at Swansea University in 2015
Certificate of Merit from the Swansea University Research Forum Research Community Award, with the Cyberterrorism Project, in 2013
Runner Up in Swansea University's Research as Art Competition, with the Cyberterrorism Project, in 2013