Erin is a faculty research assistant at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), where she manages the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). Her research focuses on the quantitative analysis of patterns of decline among terrorist organizations and movements worldwide using data from the GTD. She has taught statistics courses at the University of Maryland and given invited lectures on the GTD and the methodological implications of terrorism research. She is coauthor, with Gary LaFree and Laura Dugan, of a forthcoming book entitled, Putting Terrorism in Context: Lessons Learned from the World’s Most Comprehensive Terrorism Database (Routledge. Expected publication date: 2012).
Erin’s research interests include data collection, research methods, statistical methodology, retaliatory violence, desistance from violence, terrorism and theory and policy evaluation. She has worked on the GTD since 2004, and in her capacity as GTD Program Manager she has worked on a number of START research projects including most recently the Integrated United States Security Database (IUSSD), Terrorism in Southeast Asia, and Border Crossings and Terrorist Attacks on the United States: Lessons for Protecting against Dangerous Entrants.