Undergraduate’s research examines link between human trafficking, terrorism

By Casey Bordick '18 '24 on March 26, 2024

Towson University senior Jordan McConville ’24 began researching differences between Jihadist terrorist groups in high school through an advanced placement capstone program. Since then, her research focus has evolved to include foreign affairs in the Middle East and the methodologies of human trafficking utilized by terrorist organizations.

When beginning at TU, McConville took an Introduction to International Relations Honors College course and decided to research the Kurds—an ethnic group in the Middle East spanning Iraq, Syria and Turkey—and why they are stateless.

Related link: View Research

After McConville was awarded a research grant in spring 2023, she began working with Alison McCartney, her research adviser, to explore ISIS and how and why the group engages in human trafficking.

“ISIS is using a very intentional system to incentivize fighters to join and stay,” McConville says, “We have found that ISIS is using four different ways to traffic people.”

The first, she says, is selling ethnic minority Yazidi women as brides for ISIS fighters. Another is for funding ISIS’s activities. McConville also found the group traffics young boys, forcing them to commit crimes for the organization.

And the fourth method, she states, “is recruiting people from the West online. Some of these practices used to recruit are considered human trafficking.”

Victims of human trafficking who fight alongside ISIS pose a moral dilemma for those in counterterrorism and international affairs.

“The United Nations states that human trafficking victims cannot be punished for the crimes they performed while they were trafficked,” McConville explains. “If ISIS fighters are discovered to have been human trafficking victims, are they still held accountable as terrorists?”

McConville has presented her research at the Maryland Collegiate Honors Council Conference (MCHC) and was the keynote speaker for the Towson University-Baltimore County Public Schools (TU-BCPS) Model United Nations Conference, speaking on the effects of climate change on terrorism in Iraq and Syria.

Throughout the spring semester, McConville will be presenting at the Northeast Regional Honors Conference (NRHC) in Albany, New York, and will be attending the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference (NAFAC) in Annapolis, Maryland.

McCartney says, “Jordan takes on challenges with zeal. She designs her own thoughtful projects and pursues them with professional skill. Her ability to synthesize information from a wide variety of disciplines and types of sources, coupled with her superb writing skills, puts her alongside the best students in the country.”

After graduation, she will begin an internship at BGR Group—an international lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.—and volunteering with Araminta to prevent human trafficking in the local community. McConville says, “I trust that if I do what I'm interested in and if I keep doings things that challenge me, I'm going to end up where I'm supposed to be.”