Presented by Julia Kupper: Forensic & Tactical Linguist (Germany/USA)

13 July 2023: 16h00-17h30 (please note the later than usual starting time)

About the webinar: forensic & tactical linguistics: using language to assess threats and other concerning communications

The first part of this presentation will dissect the term “Forensic Linguistics” and present an overview of a couple of methodologies that can aid in investigating clues in language evidence: forensic authorship analysis and author profiling. The second part will dive into “Tactical Linguistics”, and introduce different types of linguistic threat analyses. These will be examined in more detail with evidence-based research on targeted violence manifestos and live-streams, online attack announcements and writings on equipment used during terrorist attacks.

About the speaker

Julia Kupper is a Forensic & Tactical Linguist based in Los Angeles, California (www.juliakupper.com). As a consultant, she collaborates with law enforcement agencies and threat assessment teams and supports inquiries by scientifically analyzing written and spoken language evidence, either in a criminal, intelligence or operational context. Ms. Kupper is a certified Terrorism Liaison Officer (Joint Regional Intelligence Center) and an expert in using the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18), the Communications Threat Assessment Protocol (CTAP-25), and the Workplace and Campus Assessment of Violence Risk (WAVR-21). She is a member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP), Los Angeles Chapter.

As an independent researcher, Ms. Kupper studies targeted violence, terrorism and suicide communications to enhance the prevention and mitigation of different types of violent threats. Her work has been featured in Perspectives on Terrorism, the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, the FBI’s online magazine Law Enforcement Bulletin, the Global Network on Extremism & Technology, and IEEE Xplore. She is currently leading several studies on the Bratislava, Buffalo and Halle terrorism attacks to assess the linguistic evidence of these cases with renowned experts from the threat assessment, forensic linguistic and forensic psychological sphere. Furthermore, she is a research fellow at the Accelerationism Research Consortium, a cross-sector collaboration of researchers, practitioners, analysts and journalists who are dedicated to understanding and mitigating the threat posed by accelerationist terrorism and political violence.

Ms. Kupper frequently presents on forensic and tactical linguistics, and has been invited to give talks across North America and Europe to train law enforcement officers, mental health specialists and corporate or private security professionals: Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (Threat Management Conference; Los Angeles Chapter; South Central Chapter); Canadian Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (CATAP); Association of European Threat Assessment Professionals (AETAP); FBI Los Angeles, Threat Assessment Regional Evaluation Team (TARGET); Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; Los Angeles Police Department; Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei (German Police University); American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS); American Psychological Association (APA); Accelerationism Research Consortium (ARC); University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA, Behavioral Intervention Team); California State University, Long Beach (Cal State); University of Copenhagen (Denmark); Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL); Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics (GSFL); and Hofstra University, Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment and Strategic Analysis.