In the popular imagination, the term 'foreign fighter' has come to be strongly associated with the Westerners who since 2012 have joined jihadi insurgents in Syria. Their departure, actions in Syria and Iraq, and sometimes violent return home where some have joined terrorist cells and staged attacks back in Europe, have occupied headlines for a long time in the past decade.
For a while the so called 'Foreign Terrorist Fighters' of ISIS looked like a hitherto unseen and captivatingly new phenomenon, as well as a security threat to the West. However, in reality foreign fighters long predate the developments of the Twenty-First Century, as for centuries people have travelled to volunteer in foreign conflicts around the world.
On 24 May, C-REX, UiO, will host two prominent experts on this topic, who will look back on the history of foreign fighters and discuss their ideological, political, and social dimensions. This will show that the phenomenon of foreign fighters is at once far broader, richer, and more complex than much of the coverage has hitherto suggested, and promises to be elucidating to anyone interested in the study of war, terrorism, security, and inter- and transnational history
Judith Keene works as an Associate Professor in Department of History at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on the Spanish civil war and World War Two and am currently writing a history of memory and the Korean War. She is also part of several international research networks whose primary concern is with war memory and its ramifications in different national contexts. Professor Keene is the author of Fighting for Franco: International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War (2007) and Treason on the Airwaves: Three Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during World War II (2009).
David Malet teaches Justice, Law and Criminology at the School of Public Affairs at American University. Previously he served as director of the Security Policy Studies Program at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. Professor Malet, who has been researching foreign fighters since 2005, is the author of Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2013 1st edition, 2017 2nd edition) and co-editor of Transnational Actors in War and Peace: Militants, Activists, and Corporations in World Politics (Georgetown University Press, 2017).