I am a writer, teacher, and storyteller. In the spring of 2024, I decided to leave a nearly decade-long career in academia. Until September, 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).
My academic research focused on what it means to “know terrorism when we see it”—and who gets to decide. Using field and archival work in Germany and the United States, I have repeatedly argued for white supremacist violence and structural white supremacy to be understood as part of the same oppressive continuum. My work shows 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. My academic writing 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 a longtime labor union activist. 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. Most recently, I served on ISA–Northeast’s governing council and co-organized 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 social justice and academia at @AnnaMeierPS, and on Bluesky at @annameier.bsky.social.