AVERT International Research Symposium
PEOPLE, PLACES AND SPACES: NEW DYNAMICS AND SHIFTING RESPONSES TO VIOLENT EXTREMISM
29th – 31st October 2024
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
In recent years there have been demographic shifts in the people drawn to or participating in violent extremism, the places they come from and the spaces where they participate in and mobilise to violence. The age range of those involved in violent extremist movements and networks has now expanded to include both younger and older cohorts. Violent extremist networks and movements are emerging in rural and semi-rural locales in addition to urban/suburban areas that formerly produced the greatest concentrations of violent extremist engagement. In addition to offline mobilisation and participation, there has been significant growth and diversification in the virtual spaces where violent extremism manifests including enhanced virtual spaces, like the metaverse and other virtual realities, which blur the dichotomy between online and offline spaces and behaviours. These shifting dynamics present new challenges for P/CVE analysis, policy and practice, including how we identify, prevent or address emerging threats within this space.
This year’s symposium explored various dimensions of these shifting dynamics around people, places and spaces. Presentations provided insights into what these emerging dynamics mean for violent extremism risk and threat analysis and their implications for policy and practitioner responses.
About
Keynote Speakers
PROFESSOR NOÉMIE BOUHANA
Professor of Crime Science and Counter Extremism at University College London
Noémie Bouhana is Professor of Crime Science and Counter Extremism at University College London, where she co-leads the Counter-Terrorism Research Group. Her work is concerned with the processes involved in the emergence of extremist social ecologies in complex social systems and the mechanisms which underpin individual vulnerability to extremism. She has directed the €2.9M EU FP7 PRIME project, an international consortium of six European universities working on the prevention and mitigation of lone actor radicalisation and attack behaviour, and the $1M project "The Social Ecology of Radicalisation", sponsored by the US DoD Minerva Initiative. Most recently, she has been funded by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) to develop an environmental extremism risk analysis framework for use by Prevent practitioners. Other work has been supported by DStl, OSCT, the MoD Counter-Terrorism Science and Technology Centre, EPSRC, and the US National Institute of Justice.
DR GHAYDA HASSAN
Université du Québec à Montréal; Canadian Practitioners Network for the Prevention of Extremist Violence
Dr Ghayda Hassan is a clinical psychologist and professor of clinical psychology at UQAM university in Montreal. She is the director of the Canadian Practioner Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence. She is also a UNESCO co-chair in Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence. She currently sits as the Chair of the Independent Advisory Committee of the Global Internet Forum for Countering Terrorism. She is a member of the RCMP Management Advisory Board and was a member of the expert advisory group on online safety at the ministry of Canadian Heritage. She is a researcher and senior clinical consultant at the SHERPA substeam RAPS for Research and Action on Radicalisation and Social Suffering at the CIUSSS Center-West of the island of Montreal.
Her systematic reviews, research and clinical activities are centred around four main areas of clinical cultural psychology: social suffering, intercommunity relations, hate, racism and extremist violence; Intervention in family violence and cultural diversity; identity, belonging and mental health of children and adolescents from ethnic/religious minorities; working with vulnerable immigrants and refugees.