Lunchtime seminar: Responding to violent extremism – resilience and rehabilitation.
Wednesday June 18, 12-1:30pm

Room BS 7.03

This seminar provides an opportunity to hear from two leading Australian scholars, Ramon Spaaij (Victoria University; Manchester Met Global Chair) and Vivian Gerrand, PhD (Deakin University), exploring novel approaches to countering violent extremism.

It will feature a 15-minute presentation from each speaker, followed by a facilitated conversation and an audience Q&A.

Lunch will be provided.

Paper 1: Facilitating disengagement from violent extremism

Professor Ramon Spaaij

The rehabilitation of terrorist offenders continues to be viewed with suspicion, which is not helped by the limited evidence base for the success of disengagement programs. This presentation aims to advance the knowledge base by sharing the findings of recent research on facilitating disengagement from violent extremism. Drawing on a three-year mixed-methods inquiry into Australia’s longest-running Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, I will present a focus on the experiences of terrorist offenders to chart their journeys through the program. By doing so, I will identify key factors that affect meaningful engagement with CVE interventions and enhance the likelihood of successful disengagement from violent extremism.

Professor Ramon Spaaij is a sociologist at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, and Global Chair at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is co-founder of the Applied Security Science Partnership (ASSP), a unique high-impact research program that brings together researchers, embedded police, defence and community members to develop novel responses to terrorism and violent extremism.

Paper 2: Building resilience to (violent) misogyny? Alternative narratives to the manosphere

Dr Vivian Gerrand

Efforts to mitigate the social influence of (violent) extremist movements through CVE counter-narrative campaigns or deplatforming initiatives have limited efficacy (Conway 2020; Hemmingsen and Castrob2017; Rogers 2020). Unlike counter-narratives, alternative narratives can be more effective at challenging extremist narratives because they directly address real and perceived grievances as well as the psycho-social needs that may lead to engagement with extremist discourse. Alternative narratives meet people where they are and support critical-thinking and social capital resource allocation. Such narratives stand for rather than against something by conveying positive content, centring on aspects of democracy and openness and promoting mutual understanding (Roose et al. 2021). Alternative narrative-based interventions can arguably be deployed to disarm the manosphere and support disengagement from violent extremist discourses. Drawing on interviews with manosphere adherents and an arts-based case study, in this presentation I explore how alternative narratives might provide critically empathetic tools to support boys and men to build resilience and disengage from anti-women online movements. 

Dr Vivian Gerrand is a Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University. Her current research addresses disinformation and (violent) extremism through alternative narratives. Vivian holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and is the author of Possible Spaces of Somali Belonging (MUP, 2016). She was a Max Weber Fellow in 2017-18.

This seminar is hosted by Manchester Met’s Migration and Interdisciplinary Global Studies Research Network, and chaired by Dr Daniel Marshall. For enquiries, email: migs@mmuac.uk