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JOLIET – When growing up in Joliet, Dr. Jeffrey Stevenson Murer followed his passion and took advantage of all the opportunities available to him, leading him to pursue and obtain a doctorate in political science and moving across the ocean to Scotland, where Dr. Murer now works a researcher and academic studying terrorism and political violence.
Murer attended John J. Pershing (District 86), Caroline Bentley (New Lenox), and Oakview (New Lenox) prior to attending Joliet East High School and transitioning to Joliet Central High School, where he graduated in May 1985.
For his four years as a high school student, Murer participated in kolage, choir, speech team, class committee, and the operetta. Murer also participated in autumn drama play for three years and in the contest drama play his senior year.
He was also a student leader in the transition committee JT East to JT Central, as Student Council president, and as a National Honor Society member. He was recognized as Exchange Club Student of the Month.
During his high school years, Murer also participated in Illinois Boys’ State in 1984, the Illinois Council on Youth (Illinois State Legislative Advisor Committee) from 1984 to 1985, and as a Century III leadership representative. He served as the Illinois representative (1982) and the national representative (1983) for the Hugh O’Brien Leadership Foundation.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and graduated with distinction in 1988. Prior to receiving his bachelor’s, he studied political science at the Budapest Economic Sciences University as part of the University of Wisconsin/University of California Exchange Program in 1987.
Murer then studied philosophy through Northwestern University’s Consortium for Institutional Cooperation Exchange in 1994 before receiving his doctorate in political science from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1999 to allow him to now work as a researcher and academic.
Previously, Murer taught at Swarthmore College outside of Philadelphia. In 2007 he moved to Scotland, and he is currently a lecturer on collective violence and a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews. In this role he conducts research on the motivations and self-understandings of people involved in group violence, ranging from ethnic conflict to street gangs.
He also teaches undergraduate and master’s students on identity politics, and supervises PhD candidates writing their dissertation. He has supervised eight doctorate students to completion.
Murer has written numerous journal articles which have appeared in “Terrorism and Political Violence” and “Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society,” among others. Murer has edited two collected volumes and has a monograph on far-right violence in Central Europe coming out in the fall.
He has been married to Trenholme Junghans for 15 years. She is a research fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge University.
Murer has received a multitude of professional awards or accolades, including that of Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (2017); Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland (2016); Contributions to Excellence in Education Award (2016); National Fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association (2006-2007); Academic Fellow to the Psychoanalytic Centre of Philadelphia (2004-2006); Associate Research Fellow to the Doctoral School for Research on Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology, University of Paris VII (2003-2005); U.S. State Department Specialist and Speaker Award (2003); Annual Graduate Dissertation Award for Best Thesis in Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago (2000).