This talk takes up the social psychology of (in)effective persuasion in conflict as a framework to understand trajectories of radicalisation and deradicalisation.

Post 9/11, counter-terrorism decision-making processes are increasingly reliant on predictive technologies, including surveillance, drone and satellite imaging, big data analytics, and automated algorithms. Dr Krebs will discuss the effects of predictive technologies, and the opaque epistemologies they entail, on counter-terrorism decision-making processes.

In 2016, Maura Conway's article 'Determining the Role of the Internet in Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Six Suggestions for Progressing Research' appeared in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. It's now the third most read article in the journal's 40-year history.

Intermittent gloomy forecasts about the health of terrorism research continue to be proven inaccurate. Surveys of the literature, and of researchers themselves, offer much cause for optimism. Terrorism research now shines brightly, so much so it may be experiencing what Silke and Schmidt-Petersen suggested is its ‘golden age’.

The Islamic State of 2020 finds itself in a largely unprecedented situation with new leaders, its organization adapting to the battle rhythms of a grinding insurgency, and the need to manage a transnational enterprise present in over twenty countries.

Popular culture has been a battleground in the culture wars for more than a decade. The increasingly large sector of videogames and gaming appears to be particularly fertile ground for the far-right to gather and recruit.

NEW International Speaker Series

In 2014, Marc Sageman proposed that terrorism research had stagnated. The claim of stagnation has resulted in a period of collective review within terrorism studies. To date, the fruits of this review have revealed a more cautiously optimistic view of the field than that proposed by Sageman. This talk will reflect on this review by analyzing the interviews of forty-three guests from the first season of the Talking Terror podcast. Presented will be a thematic analysis of their views on the overall health of terrorism research. The interviewees include both pre-and post-9/11 researchers. Through this analysis four themes are identified: Interdisciplinary Research and Researchers, Data, Applied Research, and Area/Field.

In 2013, wanting to move beyond a sports participation approach to developing community-engaged CVE activities, the Australian Federal Police brought young people together in an artistic collaboration with professional film maker Reuben Street. Central to the film making project were young people’s views on and solutions to dealing with issues that could potentially lead to radicalisation to violence. The project aimed to provide them with an opportunity in which to ‘talk back’ to representations about them by making their own representations of personal experiences and feelings. From this artistic collaboration The Dury’s Out was born, a film produced and co-written by the young people involved and members of the AFP.

“Philosophy and the Far Right, from Weimar to Charlottesville” will take place on November 18 from midday to 5:30pm at Deakin University’s Burwood Corporate Centre, Burwood Highway (in Melbourne, Australia). It will be recorded for ABC radio national’s Philosopher’s Zone. The event will feature a plenary address by Professor Ron Beiner (Toronto), author of Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger and the Far Right and a public discussion between Professor Ron Beiner and Professor Tamir Bar-On (Tec de Monterrey), author of Where Have All the Fascists Gone? and Rethinking the New Right: Alternative to Modernity.

In this exploratory study, findings highlight RPAS, anger, and negative emotion can discriminate attackers from normal bloggers, and in several attackers using RPAS, a tipping point phenomena occurs prior to the attacks against rising anger and negative sentiment.

This seminar will analyse how much of the British public discourse around Prevent focuses on what it was, not what it increasingly is, to the detriment of engagement with hard questions about whether Britain’s current Prevent focus and strategies reflect what we know about international ‘state of the art’ C/PVE best practice.

The Christchurch attacks (March 2019) and the Easter Sunday attacks on worshippers and others in Sri Lanka draw attention to the ever-present threat of radicalisation and its implications for personal safety, societal harmony and global security. They indicate the threat of radicalisation emanates both from jihadist groups and right-wing white supremacists. In light of these developments, there is an urgent need for comprehensive and evidence-based policy responses to address radicalisation and find ways towards de-radicalisation.

Far-right revolutionary ideas disseminated in global online media embody cross-national aims that can only be understood with attention to their philosophical underpinnings. Through attention to this media and its philosophical and political-economic frames, our project seeks to analyse the emergence of contemporary Western European ‘Identitarian’ movements in comparison with recently active ‘Patriot’ collectives in Australia.

Join us for an insightful panel discussion on these issues with a distinguished and lively group of social and political analysts.

In an age in which algorithms now vie with alphabets, and in which ‘artificial’ or ‘machine’ intelligence is compelling reassessments of ‘authentic’ or ‘human’ intelligence, to what extent can altered concepts of what constitutes ‘human’ (or indeed post-human) terrain help us navigate the current crossroads at which understanding and preventing violent extremisms now sit?

There is growing international debate about the effectiveness of ‘counter-narratives’ to respond to the spread of hateful and violent messages through digital media. The idea of ‘narratives’ and ‘counter-narratives’ has been used for decades in the study of political violence, to identify the battle for the hearts and minds of people, especially those at risk of being recruited by extremist groups. In this event, we will be presenting key findings from our research project: Preventing violent extremism and building youth cohesion through creative production of grassroots online counter-narratives: A pilot intervention and impact evaluation.

The positive role of negative emotions in facilitating democratic engagement has come to the fore in recent political science research. But negative emotions are not always a democratic plus. We provide needed balance to the study of political emotions by considering their potential democratic benefits and detriments, focusing on the emotional origins of selective exposure to news coverage of terrorist violence.

Building on Dr. Ungar’s research in more than a dozen countries, this presentation explores how an emerging systemic understanding of resilience can account for how young people cope with experiences of exclusion without engaging in acts of violence. Resilience will be shown to be the result of how well individuals, their families and communities work together to help those who are vulnerable navigate their way to the resources they need for wellbeing, and whether those resources are available in ways that young people experience as meaningful.

European University Institute, Organisers: Vivian Gerrand and Saeed Bagheri.

In this increasingly visual age, images have assumed new prominence in meaning-making and identity formation. Image-making practices can amplify the mechanisms by which people are marginalised and dehumanised, or they can contribute to conviviality and complex trajectories of belonging, as sites of encounter that present opportunities for intercultural interaction and agonism. This multidisciplinary workshop will enable critical reflection on how visual regimes and representations institute both the means by which an Other is projected, understood and often responded to, and the means through which a common humanity is constructed.

This presentation focuses on the recent education policy debates surrounding Muslims, schooling and the question of security in light of the UK’s Counter-Terrorism Security Act (2015).