Alex P. Schmid

[7][11] In May 2006 he was appointed to a chair in International Relations at St Andrews University,[8] and was at the same time Director of its Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), holding both posts until 2009.

[12][11][7] From 1 September 2010 to 30 June 2011, he was a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, or KNAW), where he investigated "how courts in a number of countries have been dealing with political offenders in the recent past and how those accused of acts of terrorism have performed in courts".

[2][12][7] He served on the executive board of the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council (ISPAC) of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network.

[13][7] He is a Member of the European Commission's Expert Group on Violent Radicalisation,[8] and has been an advisor to Europol's TE-SAT (annual Terrorism Situation and Trend Report) since 2010.

[11] The Supreme Court of India referenced Schmid's this definition in a 2003 ruling (Madan Singh v. State of Bihar), "defin[ing] acts of terrorism veritably as 'peacetime equivalents of war crimes'".

Terrorism refers, on the one hand, to a doctrine about the presumed effectiveness of a special form or tactic of fear-generating, coercive political violence and, on the other hand, to a conspiratorial practice of calculated, demonstrative, direct violent action without legal or moral restraints, targeting mainly civilians and non-combatants, performed for its propagandistic and psychological effects on various audiences and conflict parties;...In an article published in Contemporary Voices in 2020, Schmid revisits the many challenges associated with defining terrorism, outlining six main reasons why this is the case:[11] In this article, he also outlines the history of the search for a consensus definition, and the failure of international efforts, including a series of attempts by the UN since the 1972 Munich attack.