Andrew Thomson

Biographic Data

ID3606583
NAMEAndrew Thomson
GIVEN NAMESAndrew
FAMILY NAMEThomson
SIGNATURETHOMSON A
AFFILIATIONSQueen's University Belfast
ORCID0000-0001-7450-2159
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS66
TOTAL CITATIONS67
AUTHOR COUNT66
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1911
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX5

  • Militia Infiltration of the State: Loyalist Paramilitary Strategy in Northern Ireland

    Open AccessDale Pankhurst, Andrew ThomsonARTICLECivil Wars2026

    How can we explain militia infiltration of the state during armed conflict? “Militias” “pro-state paramilitaries” or “pro-government militias” (there are many terms in the literature and across different cases) are non-state armed organisations that are in some way aligned with state counterinsurgency programmes during civil conflict (Sabine Carey, Neil Mitchell, & Katrin Paula 2022). In this article we build on this literature by exploring how m…

  • Negotiating Peace with Pro-Government Militias: Human Rights Violations, International Pressure, and the Case of the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)

    Open AccessAndrew ThomsonARTICLENegotiation Journal2026

    This article theorizes when and why governments negotiate peace with pro-government militias (PGMs) or “pro-state” paramilitary groups. I argue that negotiations with PGMs are more likely to occur when PGM activities become costly and when domestic and international pressure to account for PGM violence mounts on both sides. While governments support (even if tacitly) PGMs for short-term advantages in counterinsurgency, PGMs often pursue their own…

  • On the road to heaviness: A retrospective of Dan Franklin’s Heavy

    Andrew ThomsonARTICLEMetal Music Studies2025

    A closer look at Dan Franklin’s Heavy: How Metal Changes the Way We See the World (2020) that includes a conversation about our own journey to metal fandom and the debates opened by Franklin’s book

  • Poverty in the southern province: A survey of parish clergy incomes in the dioceses of Winchester, Salisbury and Chichester, 1535–1705

    Open AccessAndrew ThomsonARTICLEHistorical Research2025

    Parish clergy incomes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lie at the heart of this enquiry. Their incomes would determine recruitment, retention and quality, on which delivery of the church’s mission ultimately relied. The enquiry concentrates on three dioceses – Winchester, Salisbury and Chichester – and investigates surviving surveys from the Valor Ecclesiasticus to the Notitia Parochialis, extracting the figures and assessing their vali…

  • A community of death: Death metal fandom and terror management theory

    Andrew ThomsonARTICLEThe Journal of Fandom Studies2023

    Death metal is the most brutal music in existence. It is a subgenre of music that seeks pure heaviness punctuated by guttural vocalizations more akin to a wounded beast than a human singing lyrics. To the mainstream world, death metal is sometimes misunderstood and enigmatic: how do people listen to such harsh, aggressive music? Death metal fans create a unique corner of fandom, an insular group joined together by a passion for music that is freq…

  • Metallica the state/Metallica the war machine: A Deleuzoguattarian analysis of the world’s biggest metal band

    Open AccessAndrew Thomson, Amanda M E ThomsonARTICLEMetal Music Studies2022

    Metallica has offered a diverse catalogue of music and breadth of performance over their careers. As a band occupying an integral cultural placement as measured by both level of fame and influential import, many academic inroads have been opened to their work, career and music. These lines of inquiry, along with more general lines of inquiry into the genre of heavy metal itself, frequently position Metallica as the unofficial ambassadors of the m…

  • Disrupted and deranged: The formless and the abject in Twin Peaks: The Return

    Amanda M E Thomson, Andrew ThomsonARTICLEThe Journal of Popular Television2022

    This article intends to explore the formlessness of the Woodsmen as unsettling characters in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). Their lack of, or blurred, humanity and our misunderstanding of their origins, intentions and boundaries is disruptive enough to our senses that there exists a desire to abject them. It is through this abjection that we, as viewers of Twin Peaks (1990–91), experience a loss of self that permeates through the entirety of The …

  • From Control to Conflict: A Spectrum and Framework for Understanding Government-Militia Relationships

    Open AccessAndrew Thomson, Dale PankhurstARTICLEStudies in Conflict and Terrorism2022Cited by: 5References: 11

    How can we describe and categorize government relationships with pro-government militias (PGMs)? Most research tends to focus on government sponsorship of PGMs. This entails a cooperative relationship and government delegation to PGMs. Yet most government-PGM relations are nuanced, complex, and are often fraught with uncertainty and even conflict and hostility. In this article we discuss the conceptualization of PGMs vis-à-vis a government or sta…

  • Right hand up, left hand down: The New Satanists of rock n’ roll, evil and the underground war on the abject

    Open AccessAndrew ThomsonARTICLEMetal Music Studies2020

    Satan has long served as the ultimate evil, the world’s primary scapegoat. The Devil’s role in music, especially extreme music and heavy metal, has been to shock, terrify and enrage. But what if the imagery and ideology of Satan is used to combat an immoral societal evil? Is it then possible that the radical evil could itself become a force for good? This article intends to examine the music and philosophy of three modern bands, dubbed The New Sa…

  • Church Discipline in Seventeenth-Century England: Flourishing or Floundering? The Worcestershire Experience

    Andrew ThomsonARTICLEMidland History2020

    The Church was a powerful institution in early modern times with courts to enforce its laws on the people at large. Most historians, however, consider its disciplinary machinery to be in decline by the 1690s, while Evan Davies claims there was a new vitality in the enforcement of religious conformity in the Diocese of Worcester after the Restoration. What were the nature and extent of the Church’s controls over society? Charge sheets in surviving…

  • The Ties That Bind: Ethnicity, Pro-government Militia, and the Dynamics of Violence in Civil War

    Open AccessLuke Abbs, G Clayton et al.ARTICLEJournal of Conflict Resolution2020Cited by: 7References: 60

    Existing research reveals many of the ways pro-government militia (PGM) shape civil violence but overlooks how the ethno-political ties between the state and a PGM might influence these effects. We argue that co-ethnic militia (i.e., groups composed of the ruling elite’s ethnic kin) are relatively loyal irregular forces that multiply state military capacity. The greater loyalty of co-ethnic groups mitigates principal–agent problems but further po…

  • The credible commitment problem and multiple armed groups: Farc perceptions of insecurity during disarmament in the Colombian peace process

    Andrew ThomsonARTICLEConflict Security and Development2020Cited by: 2References: 42

    Insecurities associated with the credible commitment problem during disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) processes are usually examined within a dyadic relationship between the government and a rebel group, ignoring how these insecurities play themselves out in the context of multiple warring parties. In addition, most studies on these dynamics take an overview macro-perspective, leaving out micro-dynamics such as how insecurity i…

  • Outsourced Empire: How Militias, Mercenaries, and Contractors Support US Statecraft

    Andrew ThomsonBOOKOutsourced Empire2018

  • A precarious peace? The threat of paramilitary violence to the peace process in Colombia

    David Maher, Andrew ThomsonARTICLEThird World Quarterly2018Cited by: 10References: 29

    This article provides an investigation into claims that paramilitary violence in Colombia can pose a threat to the peace agreement signed in 2016 between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels. These claims highlight the capacity for paramilitary groups to ‘spoil’ the peace deal. Hitherto, however, there is a lack of scholarly research to investigate the potential of paramilitary spoiling. Firstly, this article highlights the flaws in the g…

  • The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia's Death Squads - by Civico, Aldo

    Open AccessAndrew ThomsonARTICLEBulletin of Latin American Research2018

  • Civilianizing Civil Conflict: Civilian Defense Militias and the Logic of Violence in Intrastate Conflict

    G Clayton, Andrew ThomsonARTICLEInternational Studies Quarterly2016Cited by: 34References: 54

    This article examines how civilian defense militias shape violence during civil war. We define civilian defense forces as a sedentary and defensive form of pro-government militia that incumbents often use to harness the participation of civilians during a counterinsurgency campaign. We argue that civilian defense forces reduce the problem of insurgent identification. This leads to a reduction in state violence against civilians. However, we also …

  • State crime on the margins of empire: Rio Tinto, the war on Bougainville and resistance to mining , by Kristian Lasslett

    Andrew ThomsonARTICLECritical Studies on Terrorism2015References: 1

    The island of Bougainville, a region of Papua New Guinea, experienced one of the most violent civil conflicts in the region’s history with estimates of up to 20,000 people killed between 1988 and 1

  • The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend … The Dynamics of Self-Defense Forces in Irregular War: The Case of the Sons of Iraq

    G Clayton, Andrew ThomsonARTICLEStudies in Conflict and Terrorism2014

    This article assesses the effect that leveraging civilian defense force militias has on the dynamics of violence in civil war. We argue that the delegation of security and combat roles to local civilians shifts the primary targets of insurgent violence toward civilians, in an attempt to deter future defections, and re-establish control over the local population. This argument is assessed through an analysis of the Sunni Awakening and ancillary So…

  • The terror that underpins the ‘peace’: The political economy of Colombia's paramilitary demobilisation process

    David Maher, Andrew ThomsonARTICLECritical Studies on Terrorism2011Cited by: 6References: 1

    Studies on terrorism have traditionally focused on non-state actors who direct violence against liberal states. These studies also tend to focus on political motivations and, therefore, have neglected the economic functions of terrorism. This article challenges the divorce of the political and economic spheres by highlighting how states can use terrorism to realise interconnected political and economic goals. To demonstrate this, we take the case…

  • Lyndall Urwick, Management Pioneer

    Edward Franz Leopold Brech, Edward Brech et al.BOOKLyndall Urwick, Management Pioneer2010

    The book reviews the career of Lyndall Urwick, the dominant figure in British management between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, both in terms of his writings and his passion in pursuit of management as a scientific and systematic activity rather than the rule‐of‐thumb approach to decision‐making all too prevalent in Britain. He was greatly influenced by his experiences in the First World War and at Rowntree's, before becoming Director of the…

  • An Evaluation

    Edward Franz Leopold Brech, Edward Brech et al.CHAPTERLyndall Urwick, Management Pioneer2010

    This final chapter evaluates Urwick as a man and his contributions to management. It first discusses his character and abilities, his beliefs and vision, the influences on his career, the roles within his career, and his writing. Then, it continues to various aspects of his influence: his impact on management in Britain, his international standing, his contemporary relevance, and finally his place in history. The final paragraph contains a summat…

  • War Games

    Andrew Thomson, Sergey Prokofiev et al.ARTICLEThe Musical Times2008

  • Salad Days

    Andrew Thomson, Anthony PhillipsARTICLEThe Musical Times2007

  • Church Discipline: The Operation of the Winchester Consistory Court in the Seventeenth Century

    Open AccessAndrew ThomsonARTICLEHistory2006Cited by: 3

    Since the Reformation church courts had been the key instrument for imposing discipline in the Church of England – on clergy and laity alike. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, they suffered suspension, from which they never fully recovered. Surprisingly, in view of the importance of the diocese, the fate of the Winchester Consistory Court at that time has received little attention. This article attempts to fill the gap. The court's decline…

  • Interpreting Posterior Relative Risk Estimates in Disease-Mapping Studies

    Open AccessSylvia Richardson, Andrew Thomson et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Health Perspectives2004

    There is currently much interest in conducting spatial analyses of health outcomes at the small-area scale. This requires sophisticated statistical techniques, usually involving Bayesian models, to smooth the underlying risk estimates because the data are typically sparse. However, questions have been raised about the performance of these models for recovering the "true" risk surface, about the influence of the prior structure specified, and abou…