Violent Extremism Research Symposium
Wednesday 3 November - Friday 5 November 2021
The 2021 AVERT Research Symposium explored the theme ‘Violent Extremism at the Crossroads: Persistence, Change and Dynamism 20 Years After 9/11’.
Through generous sponsorship from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, AVERT hosted over 200 online participants from around the world for three stimulating and rewarding days of intellectual and practical inquiry and dialogue on the contemporary dynamics of violent extremism.
The symposium featured two outstanding keynote addresses from Professor Martha Crenshaw and Professor Maura Conway, as well as a number of engaging presentations that addressed issues including:
● How fit for purpose are current preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) architectures of policy and practice for responding to these dynamics?
● What lessons have we learned over the last 20 years, and how can we apply them to existing and future challenges?
● How can we promote genuine community-led P/CVE?
● What resources do we need to help divert and disengage people from violent extremism across different ideologies, platforms and networks, especially in relation to young people?
● Is the ‘violent’ in violent extremism still the primary focus, or does the evolving relationship between non-violent and violent forms of extremism demand new understandings, responses and interventions?
● How should we navigate the boundaries between violent extremism versus democratic social protest and dissent?
You can access the conference proceedings here:
Michele Grossman (Convenor), Lydia Khalil (Coordinator) and the AVERT International Research Symposium Organising Committee (John Cianchi, Natalie Davis, David Kernot, Aftab Malik, Natalie Pyszora, Debra Smith, Lise Waldek, Andrew Wright)
Keynote Speakers
Maura Conway is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University; Professor of Cyber Threats in CYTREC at Swansea University; and the Coordinator of VOX-Pol (voxpol.eu).
Martha Crenshaw is senior fellow emerita at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, and professor emerita of Government at Wesleyan University. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Recent publications include “Rethinking Transnational Terrorism: An Integrated Approach,” United States Institute of Peace Peaceworks Report, 2020. She is a Principal Investigator with NCITE, a Center of Excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Previously she was a Principal Investigator with START, a DHS Center of Excellence at the University of Maryland (2005-2017). She directs the Mapping Militants Project.