French poet Rene Char wrote that in the shadows, there is not one place for beauty. Every place is for beauty. Writing illuminates, for a brief moment, what it is to be human in a world marked by shadows. 

When I became a cartographer of violent places, I had in mind something clinical and detached, an observer’s notebook of events, timelines, and dates. I studied political science in university, wrote my PhD on paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, focused on acquiring the cool, clean skills of data analysis, narrative mapping, and macro and micro analysis of complex political and geopolitical dynamics. In my career as an analyst, I travelled worlds, from the death squads of the Rwandese genocide to the bellies of cities split open by war, from the origins of Al Qaeda to the warzones of the Chechen muhajadeen, into the air conditioned rooms where mercenaries and politicians sit together and slice up the world. 

By night I was unfaithful to that cool detachment, wildly enchanted by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s descriptions of alienation and violence, cavorting with George Seferis and his beautiful concepts on the mytho-poetic and history, tracing pathways across sweeping historical stories with Milorad Pavic. These writers intoxicated me with their depth and perception, their rich imaginative descriptions of being human. They became my travelling companions on my road from analyst to mythographer of the darkness. They showed me how to illuminate with penetrating light, the elegant linear models of violence and power that came from my political science and terrorism studies.

I am writing my first book, Stories of the Minotaur, which looks at the role of artists and writers in helping societies make sense of terrorist violence. I am creating a visual language, based on the maps of the Byzantine and Catholic  icons and illuminated manuscripts, to explain the patterns and stories of terrorism as a subject of study.  I share parts of this exploration on my Instagram. Github, functioning for me like a cold war intelligence archive, contains the evidence behind my research, my experiments with data visualisation and information design, notes on the modelling of terrorism patterns, and research notes and interviews. I took most of the photographs on this site.

I started Sintaksis, a writers’ group  to explore the use of creative non-fiction techniques and imaginative methodologies in writing about terrorism. Membership is by invitation only.  Sintaksis is based on a 1960s Soviet samizdhat, a style of underground magazine. 

I also have a Substack, the Knowledge Mechanic, which gives perspectives and applications for working in the knowledge economy. My day job is as a commercial strategist with expertise in intelligence and uncovering hidden knowledge.

Recent Publications

Emerging Threat Landscapes: Irish Defence Forces Journal https://digital.jmpublishing.ie/i/1539308-an-cosantoir-july-august-2025/23?

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