Unmaking Incels: Addressing Incel Radicalisation Through Interdisciplinary Perspectives Informing Policy and Stakeholder Frameworks

This fellowship will provide the opportunity to communicate the findings of my PhD to a variety of academics, policymakers, and stakeholders concerned with the rise in toxic digital masculinities and gender-based violence. A significant output of my research involved mapping the digital landscape of the involuntary celibate or ‘incel’ community. Alongside this, the journey young and adolescent men take into this identity was also tracked through social structures, lived experience, and personal responses to these events. These are both novel findings in a nascent field. Hitherto research has mainly focused on either the social structures that promote incel ideology, such as patriarchy and male supremacism, or lived experiences of these men through their mental health or developmental conditions. My research is the first to bridge this divide, plotting a middle ground that merges these two camps through an empathetic feminist position. These novel findings offer impact both in the policymaking and stakeholder communities, and the academic sphere. As the government is looking to reduce violence against women and curb toxic misogynist influencers, my research shines a light on the media and modes of communication enabling the ideology behind these actors and actions to flourish among young and adolescent men. With the UK Online Safety Act 2023 aiming to prevent children and adults from accessing harmful and extreme content, I aim to use this fellowship to speak directly to those looking to better understand the links between online content and real-world harm. Through communicating the mechanism by which young and adolescent men become indoctrinated into misogynistic ideology, this fellowship will enable me to provide stakeholders with a blueprint for interventions necessary to curb the rise of associated violence. Among only a handful of investigations speaking directly to incels, my resulting interview data is invaluable to a research community looking to better characterise the incel community, and mitigate potential harms arising from within. I aim to use this fellowship to author high-quality publications reaching a large number of academics approaching incels from several different disciplines. Furthermore, I have secured a contract to publish a book based upon the core of my doctoral research. This monograph builds on the interdisciplinary foundations of my thesis, mapping incel digital space and tracking the journey to the incel identity in detail. Completion of these outputs will establish a respectable scholarly track record and initiate a discussion regarding how the field progresses beyond singular ways of looking at incels into a more collaborative space, working together to reduce the harm incels cause to others and themselves. I aim to use this fellowship to promote this discussion on national and international stages, attending a number of conferences in the UK, Europe, and USA to directly address academics and policymakers from a number of different backgrounds and perspectives. Through this promotion of my work, I will be able to contribute to shaping interdisciplinary incel research and efforts challenging ideology leading to the incel identity and normalisation of misogyny and gender-based violence. Through these aims, this postdoctoral fellowship will maximise the impact of my novel and important interdisciplinary research findings. By developing a sound body of scholarly publications, a diverse network, and communicating my research on national and international stages, this opportunity will enhance the pursuit of my long-term career goal of achieving an impactful research-centred academic position.