Extremist Engineers [Careers]

Which academic pursuit has been the most prevalent among Islamic jihadis? It´s not the oddest question to come up at a dinner party, especially at the University of Oxford. But when it comes up between a Middle East expert and a sociologist, idle talk yields to a quest for data. That´s how political scientist Steffen Hertog and sociology professor Diego Gambetta soon found themselves poring through records of 404 people from 30 countries engaged in political violence between 2005 and 2007.Their answer? Engineering.