Beatrice de Graaf is a historian and a security & terrorism researcher. Her research focuses on how states and societies try to maintain high levels of security and how these attempts relate to core values and institutions, such as democracy, freedom, rule of law, constitutional and responsible government. She studies the emergence of and threats to such security arrangements from the 19th century until the present, including in times where both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of these arrangements were at risk. As a strong science communicator, Beatrice appears regularly on (international) television and radio stations, and in newspapers.

She currently leads the “Securing Europe” (SECURE) project, funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant. She is a fellow in the ISIS Files project/Program on Extremism at the George Washington University. In Utrecht, she is also lead developer of the TerInfo project, an open source platform for primary schools, secondary schools and higher education to prepare material on sensitive issues such as terrorism, conflict and radicalization for use in the classroom. De Graaf is a member of The Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW). In 2018, she was awarded the NWO Stevin Prize, one of the highest honours in Dutch Academia. As of 1 December 2019, Beatrice has been appointed Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities.