Teaching
International Security & Innovation 301
Department of Politics & International Relations
University of Oxford
I teach the International Security & Innovation (ISI) course at the University of Oxford's Department of Political & International Relations through small group tutorials delivered weekly across the Michaelmas or Hilary terms. This course is designed to give students a deep understanding of emerging technologies & security threats through weekly case studies and writing assignments that encourage them to engage with empirics that are situated within broader theoretical frameworks from political science and international relations. Thematic modules cover AI Safety, Cybersecurity, Hybrid Threats, Terrorist & Violent Extremism Content, Disinformation & Medical Misinformation, Hash-sharing Databases and Behavioural Signals, Hostile Foreign States, Non-State Actors, Influence Campaigns, US-China Technology Competition, Investment & Innovation, Shaping Public Policy. In the courses, weekly writing assignments, students are asked to develop arguments exploring how each aspect of these challenges interact with each other and can be addressed by policy-makers and scholars working closely together. Students are expected to engage deeply with the reading list and the assigned readings each week as the prepare their essays. I have taught a range of students including visiting students from the United States as well as Politics, Philosophy, and Economics students from the Department of Politics & International Relations, Oxford and St Catherine's College Oxford.
Politics in the Middle East 211
Department of Politics & International Relations
University of Oxford
Small group teaching of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics students in the Politics of the Middle East 211 course delivered by the Department of Politics & International Relations, Oxford and New College, Oxford. Topics covered by this course include the enduring effects and legacies of empire and colonialism visible in state structure, internal quota systems, and fragmented social and cultural integration. Additional topics included the state and its institutions, political economy, political Islam, Salafism, Wahhabism, Salafi-Jihadism, political violence, revolutions, civil wars, transitional justice, political participation, gender, protest and civil society, migration, and forced displacement over the course of Trinity Term. Students were required to produce weekly essays from the assigned readings. The full reading list is circulated before the course begins. Delivery included leading weekly discussions of each topic and assessment of student essays and written work.
Comparative Government 201
Department of Politics & International Relations
University of Oxford
Organise and deliver tutorials for the Comparative Government 201 course offered through the Department of Politics & International Relations, Oxford and St Catherine's College, Oxford. Topics covered by this course included a broad introduction to political science and methods, alongside sections on constitutional norms, political parties and ideologies, social movements, collective action problems, comparative political jurisdictions, and regional social conditions over the course of Michaelmas Term. Students were required to produce weekly essays from the assigned readings. The full reading list is circulated before the course begins. Delivery included leading weekly discussions of each topic and assessment of student essays and written work.Delivery included leading weekly discussions of each topic, student assessments, mentoring students, reviewing student essays, and final examination grading.
AI Red Teaming and In-Person Crisis Simulations
Workshops, Trainings, and Consulting Sessions
Government, NGOs, AI Labs, Universities
Through workshops, seminars, and consulting sessions, I have taught beginners, civil servants, and industry professionals alike how to design and implement rigorous AI Security evaluations and redteaming exercises. My trainings focus on identifying and preventing high-severity harms including across Counterterrorism, Extremism, Election Interference, Disinformation, Hybrid Threats, Criminal Misuse, Cybersecurity, Privacy, Bias. My methodology focusses on improving adversarial robustness to ensure redteaming and evals reflect real-world misuse by malicious actors, rather than the superficial single-turn benchmarking and speculative, science fiction redteaming sometimes seen in non-SME redteaming and evals. I combine best practices from government, industry, and academia into an accessible format across one to five sessions depending on scope and target areas. Participants also have the opportunity to take part in an accelerated Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) training workshop prior to beginning redteaming as this provides the foundation for conducting high-fidelity testing that reflects real-world misuse. Remote and online options are possible but in-person is preferred for the nature of this training. To book a workshop or individual training session for your company, agency, or university, please send an enquiry to my consulting company here.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Methods Training
Workshops, Trainings, and Consulting Sessions
Government, Social Media, AI Platforms, Universities
My OSINT workshops and training sessions teach students, geopolitical risk teams, civil servants, and industry professionals of all skills levels how to conduct systematic Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) investigations and automated media monitoring. high-severity online harms, including terrorism, extremism, mass atrocities during armed conflicts and civil wars, and hybrid threats from hostile foreign states. My methodology focuses on equipping students with a set of universal skills that can be applied to a wide range of online harms and settings. Alongside this, students gain practical experience through hands-on use of OSINT software for geolocation, data scrapping, data labelling, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, building small custom AI tools to automate processes, and accessing encrypted channels, latent content, and dark-web sources safety. The trainings cover the legal, ethical, safety considerations associated with any research and learn how to collate OSINT and HUMINT data to improve the robustness and verifiability. To book a workshop or individual training for your company, agency, or university, please send an enquiry to my consulting company (all participants must have a modern computer as well as a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) subscription to participate)
Undergraduate Admissions & Interviews
As part of my college roles, I help with annual undergraduate admissions review and interviews for prospective Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) students. I deeply enjoy the process of getting to engage with bright students who are interested in learning more about philosophy, politics, and economics in a challenging but supportive environment. These distinct fields are distinct but deeply interconnected and this is reflected in the design and nature of the program. As part of my college duties, I also assist with expanding access programs, including student visits from academies and other state-funded schools. If you are considering applying to study philosophy, politics, or economics and are looking for where to get started, please take a close look at the University of Oxford's resource guide and scholarships as you begin this process.
Former Students
Testimonials
"Broderick McDonald is a fantastic lecturer and I really enjoyed learning from him this semester. During class, he always asked engaging questions that pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to think critically. He consistently gave thoughtful feedback on my assignments and listed specific ways to improve. Thanks to his actionable feedback, I saw a marked improvement in my writing skills.
He was also very attuned to my academic interests, and he tailored lessons to my interests while still introducing new subjects to expand my knowledge. He always created thought-provoking essay prompts that were relevant to current events. He always pushed me to apply theory to real life situations and to find patterns rather than just writing descriptive essays.
Broderick McDonald is an expert at small-group teaching and he always makes the most of class time. I highly recommend taking a class with him"
Julia High
International Security & Innovation 201
Harvard University '26 / Oxford University '25
Visiting Student
Research & Teaching
My teaching is informed and enhanced by past experience and ongoing research in several fields, including political violence, conflict, extremism, counter-terrorism, and emerging threats. Much of my academic research examines how Salafi-Jihadism has emerged and evolved over time, as well as how Salafi-Jihadist actors behave in civil conflicts, especially as they consolidate their control over rival groups. It also considers how these groups establish so-called 'jihadist proto-states', or systems of local governance by violent Islamist actors, during and after consolidation. The majority of research on conflict and extremism considers how rebel groups fight against governments, but relatively little analysis has considered how rebel groups compete with each other. Intra-rebel conflict often accounts for more than half of the conflict events within civil wars and is important in understanding conflict trajectories and outcomes. Where the academic literature has considered inter-rebel conflict, it is often too narrowly focussed on fighting, ignoring a much broader typology of inter-rebel interactions which includes alliance-formation, poaching, bargaining, cooperating, and economic coordination. While nationalist rebels have received some attention within peace and conflict studies, the consolidation practices of Jihadist-Salafist groups remain almost entirely unstudied, despite the presence of such groups in more than 50% of active conflicts in the world. My research begins filling in some of these gaps in our understanding of inter-rebel competition by examining inter-rebel competition and consolidation within the Syrian Civil War. The Syrian Conflict, which began with hundreds of rival rebel groups has gradually narrowed to include only a few major factions, with Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) representing the largest and best organised. This research seeks to examine groups such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Nusra / HTS), Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIL / ISIS), Al-Shabaab (AS), and the Afghan Taliban (AT). To learn more about my research, please visit the projects and publications sections of the website.
About
Broderick McDonald is an academic researcher at Oxford University, Kings College London and The Alan Turing Institute with a decade of experience across government, academia, and civil society. His research focuses on countering global security threats from terrorism, extremism, and disinformation across ideologies and contexts. Broderick's research and commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and The Globe and Mail amongst others. Alongside his research, Broderick provides expert analysis for a range of international news broadcasters including ABC News, BBC News, BBC America, CBC News, PBS, Good Morning America, France24, and Al Jazeera News.
Broderick McDonald is a Research Fellow at Kings College London's XCEPT Research Programme, a Research Associate at the Oxford Emerging Threats Group. Outside of this, he is a Visiting Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute's Centre for Emerging Technology & Security (CETaS) where his work focusses on preventing high-severity adversarial threats from terrorism, extremism, and disinformation. Prior to this, he served as an Advisor in Parliament and as a researcher with the All Party Parliamentary Group for Genocide Prevention. Previously, he was a Fellow with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the Royal Society of the Arts. He previously lived in the Middle East and conducted extensive interviews with armed combatants and foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and combatants from ISIS, HTS, and other armed groups. Broderick has conducted fieldwork across the Middle East and Central Asia, including Jordan, Lebanon, Türkiye, Uzbekistan and organised Large-N quantitative and qualitative research projects. His research has been funded by the University of Oxford, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), UK International Development, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kings College London, and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). He currently serves on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT)'s Independent Advisory Committee, an initative established by Meta, Google, Microsoft, and other technology platforms to counter terrorist misuse of the internet. Outside of this, he serves on the GLOCA Board of Advisors, the EU VOX-Pol Network of Excellence leadership team, and the Aspen Institute UK's RLF Advisory Board. Alongside his research, Broderick has supported and advised governments, NGOs, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, international prosecutors, parliamentarians, AI Security Institutes, frontier AI labs, and social media platforms on security threats and emerging technologies
