Chris Allen3

Associate Professor, School of Criminology, University of Leicester
Chris is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology at the University of Leicester. For just over two decades, he has been researching Islamophobia, hate crime, the far-right, counter-extremism and counter-terror, and wider issues relating to the ‘problematisation’ of Muslim communities. His research has also focused on wider issues religion in the political and policy spaces. In doing so, he has been funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Economic & Social Research Council, British governmental departments including the Department for Communities and Local Government, local authorities, the European Union and a wide range of state agencies, third sector organisations and charitable bodies.

He has published widely both in the UK and elsewhere including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey among others. His latest monograph titled, "Reconfiguring Islamophobia: a radical rethinking of a contested concept" (2020) was published by Palgrave Macmillan. As well as academic and scholarly publishing he also regularly writes for non-specialist audiences across a variety of platforms and outlets. He is also committed to public engagement and regularly gives talks in various non-academic settings while also regularly appearing in the broadcast media.

Over the past decade, he has held various independent advisory roles across the British political spectrum. Until recently, he was an independent adviser to the British Government on Anti-Muslim Hate and Islamophobia. During that same pent years he also contributed written and oral evidence to a number of different government bodies and commissions including the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia, All Party Parliamentary Group on Universities, Home Affairs Select Committee on Hate Crimes, and the Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life among others. He is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Royal Society of Arts, the US Department of State’s International Visiting Leadership Program and an alumnus of the John Adams Society.