In the settler-colonial context of Australia, this paper addresses the specific framing of masculinity with which right-wing populism seeks to engage. It reports on a recent online survey completed by 335 men. Their written responses pointed to troubles in their lives, including difficult relationship and career circumstances. However, they did…

In the last decade, growing concerns about radicalized violence have led governments to make important efforts and invest significant sums of money in developing programs to prevent violent extremism (PVE). Despite these efforts, current knowledge regarding best practices in prevention remains disparate, and the effectiveness of practices used at present…

This paper examines radicalization through the lens of contemporary psychoanalysis and social theory, challenging the dominant view of radicalization as a singular pathological transformation from a “normal” to an “abnormal” state. Instead, it conceptualizes radicalization as a psychosocial process embedded in subjective identity structures and broader historical conditions. Drawing on…

Despite the increasing need for tertiary prevention programme interventions, knowledge is lacking on which methods used in programmes work and which do not. Through semi-structured interviews with twelve practitioners and combination of grounded theory and reflexive thematic analysis, this article explores: how do tertiary prevention intervention providers measure the progress…

The question of what roles, if any, former extremists can or should play in PVE efforts is one that has received increased attention in recent years. This article contributes to that conversation by collecting input from preventing violent extremism (PVE) experts we brought together in June 2023 for a full-day…

How to best chart and analyse extremist digital ecosystems? This paper proposes to complement standard mapping methods based on URL outlinks, which are typically deployed but present several critical flaws, with socio-semantic network analysis. Adapting bi-nodal socio-semantic network principles to the specificities of extremist and terrorist digital communications, we put…

The radicalisation of young people has been a noted challenge in security discourse. This study sought to better understand the radicalisation of young Australians. We suggest that the engagement of young Australians with violent extremism can be understood through ideological entitativity, in which extremist communities satisfy unmet needs in the…

Are there things schools can do to build pupils’ resilience to extremism? The UK ‘Prevent duty’ assumes there are, but schools are poorly served by existing government advice. Here I offer a cautious defence of the idea that the acquisition of extremist beliefs and attitudes can be forestalled by educational…

The global threat of violent extremism (VE) has intensified in recent years, evidenced by a significant increase in violent incidents. Despite numerous theoretical and empirical explanations across disciplines, a lack of cross-fertilisation between these research domains has hindered the development of a comprehensive understanding of VE. To bridge this gap,…

In the aftermath of 9/11 security agencies augmented their counterterrorism (CT) apparatuses with advanced analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve their ability to identify and neutralize terrorists. Under this regime, humans remained the central actors, tasked with understanding information and crafting a response. The advent of…

Empirical research on terrorism has tended to overlook the heterogeneity of the radicalized population, and how, in its heterogeneity, it differs from the general population. This study first asks how radicalized individuals, irrespective of the activities they participated in during their trajectory, differ from the general population. It then divides…

This article explores the diverse forms of women’s participation in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) initiatives in the Philippines. While most literature on P/CVE primarily emphasises women’s roles as mothers, this paper highlights other roles women undertake within P/CVE efforts. These participatory forms stem from the contextual conditions driving…