IMPACT Europe researchers’ media and outreach activities

IMPACT Europe’s researchers continued throughout the past months to carry out outreach and dissemination activities, talking to the media and participating in events and conferences resonating with the project’s mission and goals. Ines von Behr (@InesvonBehr) from RAND Europe was recently featured in various media outlets. Talking with Euronews in the aftermath of Paris’ terrorist attacks, Von Behr stressed the importance of focusing efforts on understanding and tackling home-grown radicalisation and extremism phenomena to avoid the occurrence of similar events again in the future. Measures adopted to monitor and counter radicalisation in Belgium, as well as their known pitfalls, were also the focus of discussion in a post written by von Behr for the RAND Blog in the midst of the Brussels security lockdown.

Von Behr was also interviewed by Expo, one of Sweden’s biggest and most influential magazines concerning extremism. In particular, Von Behr discussed her research work on the potential role of the internet as regards fostering individual processes of radicalisation. Von Behr highlighted how the internet can speed up these processes by increasing the possibilities for contact between individuals and serve as an ‘echo chamber’ for extremist views amongst groups on multiple points of the political spectrum, such as right-wingers and radical Islamist ones. You can read the interview in Swedish here.

During previous months, IMPACT Europe researchers also continued to present and brief the project at academic conferences and in stakeholders’ and policymakers’ fora. Anke von Gorp of Hogeschool Utrecht carried out a presentation on The role of education and schools in prevention of radicalisation during the yearly conference of the National Platform for Local Professionals at The Hague in June. Van Gorp, alongside Theo Muskee (DNP) and Ron Wonder (VJI) also discussed IMPACT Europe with a representative of the Dutch coordinator for security and counterterrorism (NCTV) in June.