Michelle Brooks is Head of Research at the award-winning counter-extremist and gender empowerment consultancy ‘Inspire’ in the UK. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Reading on ‘Belonging and Security among Risk Groups’ and lectures in Human Geography at Bath Spa University and The University of Reading. Prior to beginning an academic career Michelle worked in the emergency aid sector including post-tsunami Sri Lanka and has retained a focus on development issues in the region ever since conducting research with the UN and Save the Children on Belonging and Kinship Network Capital in marginalised communities overseas.

Regularly speaking at conferences and lectures around the world, Michelle always seeks to infuse undergraduate lectures with real-time research and international conference feedback. She is a keen geographer and complex emergencies specialist; using her experience in the emergency aid sector and geographical training to produce research with innovative, enabling methods that have cohesive outcomes for government and communities. Michelle has written on the path to terror for western women, the criminalisation of forced marriage in the UK, poverty and exclusion in the global south and writes on issues surrounding women in faith communities in North Atlantic rim societies. Michelle has a keen interest in education as a university lecturer and has also written on problems surrounding Madrassahs in the UK. Recently her work among seriously intimidated Muslim women in the UK was made into a BBC documentary which has led to more support for the victims from the Police and Crown Prosecution Service. Michelle is a visiting lecturer at Georgia State University; US, The University of New England and The University of Western Sydney; Australia and is married with two children.

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