I am an assistant professor in the School of Politics & International Relations at the University of Nottingham and an affiliate of the Centre for Research into Ideas and the Study of Political Ideologies (CRISPI) and the Centre for US in the World Studies (USW). I study what it means to “know terrorism when we see it”—and who gets to decide. I do this by talking to national security bureaucrats and policymakers in Germany and the U.S. and seeking to understand how the people who make counterterrorism policy understand what terrorism is, where it comes from, and what makes it different from other forms of violence.
My current book project, White Supremacy and the Making of Counterterrorism: Stories, uses interviews and fieldwork in Germany and the United States to investigate the persistent lack of policy responses to white supremacist violence. I argue and empirically demonstrate that institutional white supremacy constrains the imaginations of even the most anti-racist national security policymakers, and in doing so constitutes counterterrorism as a tool of governance, not national security. I also work on German security politics, anti-trans violence, and critical theory. My work has been published or is forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Security Studies, Lawfare, GNET, The Washington Post, and Political Violence at a Glance, and has been funded by the British International Studies Association.
I am a devoted educator, a fellow with the Higher Education Academy, and an active member of the University of Nottingham’s branch of the University and College Union. As a queer academic with mental illness, I am passionate about creating classrooms welcoming to and inclusive of all learners and have written on this topic for the Higher Education Policy Institute. I piloted UW–Madison political science’s first diversity recruitment initiative, served on both departmental and professional committees advocating for graduate students, and was part of a team that studied the history of Black faculty hires in UW–Madison political science. Currently I serve on ISA–Northeast’s governing council and co-organize ISA’s Early Career Workshops.
I received my Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2021. Before graduate school, I worked on the Global Terrorism Database at the START Consortium at the University of Maryland, on communications and defense research at the Project On Government Oversight, and in coffee and wine sales. I hold an MA in political science from UW–Madison and bachelor’s degrees in international relations and modern languages (summa cum laude, with honors) from Knox College. I use she/her pronouns.
I post frequently on the website formerly known as Twitter about terrorism, academia, and social justice at @AnnaMeierPS, and on Bluesky at @annameier.bsky.social.