Burcu Pinar Alakoc is a Visiting Fellow at CPOST during the 2020-21 academic year. She is an associate professor in the Department of History, Politics and International Relations at Webster University in St. Louis, where she also serves as the Co-Director of the Global International Relations Program. Her research focuses on terrorism, political violence, as well as refugees and migration. Her work has examined the lethality of suicide terrorism, the effectiveness of organizationally-linked versus lone-wolf terrorist attacks, and the strategic use of female suicide bombers in terrorist operations. Most recently, she has led a collaborative research project investigating the factors that influence attitudes toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. During her time at CPOST, she will focus on two major research projects. Building on her past field research in Turkey, the first project will study individual perceptions pertaining to social integration of refugees in host nations. Second, she will begin work on a recently-funded project exploring the role of women in countering terrorism and violent extremism through a comparison of two non-governmental organizations, one based in Europe and one in Turkey. Her research has appeared in Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, International Journal of Conflict and Violence and Journal of Political Science Education. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2014.