Mia Bloom is a Professor of Communication and Middle East Studies and the International Security Fellow at New America. She conducts ethnographic field research in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia and speaks eight languages. Author of Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (2005), Living Together After Ethnic Killing; with Roy Licklider; (2007), Bombshell: Women and Terror (2011), Small Arms: Children and Terror (2019), and Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon with Sophia Moskalenko (2021). Bloom’s next book, Veiled Threats will be published with Cornell University Press. Bloom is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held research or teaching appointments at Princeton, Cornell, Harvard and McGill Universities. Bloom is the editor for Stanford University Press’ series on terrorism and political violence. She is regularly featured as an expert contributor on CNN, CNN International, MSNBC and Fox News for terrorism and national security issues. Bloom is a member of the UN terrorism research network (UNCTED) and a member of the radicalization expert advisory board for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Bloom holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, an M.A. in Arab Studies from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a B.A. from McGill University in Russian, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

 

Research Interests

Terrorism, Radicalization, Conspiracy Theories, Child Soldiers

Select Publications

Bloom, M. (2023). Veiled Threats: Women and Jihad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (ms. completed and under contract) forthcoming.

Bloom, M. and Moskalenko, S., (2021). Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon. Stanford University Press. (Selected by the New York Times as a “Top 10 book” August 2021 and Nominated for the 2022 Grawemeyer Award for the best book Improving World Order).

Bloom, M. (2019). Small Arms: Children and Terrorism. NY: Cornell University Press. (Nominated for the 2020 Grawemeyer Award for the best book Improving World Order, honorable mention.)
Bloom, M. (2011). Bombshell: Women and Terrorism. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

b. UK: Bombshell: The Many Faces of Women Terrorists. London: Hurst Publications; Toronto: Penguin Press.

c. Netherlands: Dutch Translation: Met volle overtuiging: vrouwen en terreur. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Leitung Press.

Licklider R. & Bloom, M. (eds.), (2006). Living Together After Ethnic Killing, UK: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Press (published in the United States 2007).
Bloom, M. (2005). Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror. NY: Columbia University Press (expanded 2nd edition, June 2007). Updated Audio book released in 2020 for audible.com.

Peer Reviewed Articles:

Moskalenko, S., Kates, N., Bloom, M., & Fernández-Garayzábal González, J., (2022) “Predictors of radical intentions among Incels: A survey of 54 self-identified Incels,” Journal of Online Trust and Security.

Moskalenko, S., Burton, B., Bloom, M., & Fernández-Garayzábal González, J. (2022). “Secondhand Conspiracy Theories: The Social, Emotional and Political Tolls on Loved Ones of QAnon Followers,” Democracy and Security, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17419166.2022.2111305?src

Bloom, M. (2022) “The First Incel? The Legacy of Marc Lépine.” Journal of Intelligence Conflict and Warfare. Vol 5 #1 2022 https://doi.org/10.21810/jicw.v5i1.4214
Buntain, C, Deal Barlow, M., Johns, M. & Bloom, M. (2022) “Paved with Bad Intentions: QAnon’s #SavetheChildren Campaign.” Journal of Online Trust and Safety 1(2) Stanford, https://doi.org/ 10.54501/jots.v1i2.51

Joseph, K. Benigni, M., Wei, W. Carley, K.M., and Bloom, M., (2022) War or Adaptation? Arab Spring

Stories in News and Twitter. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10588-017-9255-3

Ellis, H. B, Cardeli, E, Bloom, M. and Weine, S., (2021) “Understanding the needs of children returning from ISIS controlled territories through an Emotional Security Theory lens: Implications for practice,” Child Abuse & Neglect vol. 109 November 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104754

Bloom, M. (2021). “Conducting Field Research in the Time of Corona.” PS Special Issue with Ora Szekely and Peter Krause doi:10.1017/S1049096520001754

Bloom, M. & Lokmanoglu, A., (2020) “From Pawns to Knights: Changing Role of Women’s Agency in Terrorism.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1759263?journalCode=uter20

Abeysinghe, B., M. Bloom, and R. Sunderraman, (2019) “Localizing Assault Rifles in ISIS Propaganda Images; Experiments of a semantic segmentation approach.” Transactions on Computational Social Systems IEEE.

Cardeli, E., Bloom, M., Gillespie, S., Zayed, T., & Ellis, H.B., (2019). “Exploring the Social-Ecological Factors that Mobilize Children Into Violence” Terrorism and Political Violence. Print ed. May 2022. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2019.1701444