UK Perspectives on Deradicalization Panel Discussion

Speakers: Dr. Noémie Bouhana (University College London Department of Security and Crime Science); Prof. Neil Ferguson (Liverpool Hope University); Dr. Joel Busher (Coventry University); Dr. Christopher McDowell (City, University of London)

Date: 9 December 2019

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a panel discussion as a part of its SMA CENTCOM Speaker Series. The panelists included Dr. Noémie Bouhana (University College London Department of Security and Crime Science), Prof. Neil Ferguson (Liverpool Hope University), Dr. Joel Busher (Coventry University), and Dr. Christopher McDowell (City, University of London). The moderator was Dr. Nicholas Wright (Intelligent Biology).

Dr. Bouhana began by emphasizing the critical importance of the physical environment in shaping behavior amongst radicalized populations. She stated that context matters when developing effective deradicalization programs, deradicalization should not be used as a prerequisite to social reintegration, and deradicalization is a spatial process—one must govern a space in order to change the behavior of those in that space. Next, Prof. Ferguson presented some lessons learned from the Northern Ireland peace process and highlighted that full deradicalization may not be necessary for complete disengagement. He also presented evidence derived from his research on deradicalization programs from across the globe, including that disengaging groups is more effective than disengaging individuals, and the longer someone engages in a deradicalization program, the more likely that individual will develop the critical insight and psychological processing needed to disengage. He concluded by discussing the importance of identity in engagement in and disengagement from violent extremism. Dr. Busher focused his portion of the discussion on why certain actors within militant groups or networks themselves choose not to engage in violence or engage only in low-level violence. He identified five different “brakes”: 1) strategic logic, 2) moral logic, 3) the logic of ego maintenance, 4) the logic of out-group definition, and 5) organizational logic. Moreover, he explained how his insights regarding how individuals and groups can set the parameters of their own violence might be used to inform strategies for assessing and responding to emergent threats. Lastly, Dr. McDowell considered the engagement of combatant groups in forced migration and settlement, while drawing on his years of research on Tamil asylum migration from Sri Lanka.  He examined the ways in which the international refugee system and the process of flight, encampment, onward movement, and asylum-seeking create opportunities for radicalization. Strong and charismatic agents, places of settlement that allow individuals plenty of free time, and social marginalization within camps are among these factors that can contribute to refugee radicalization.

Speaker Session Audio Recording

To access an audio file of the session, please email Ms. Nicole Omundson (nomundson@nsiteam.com).

Briefing Materials

Biographies:

Dr. Noémie Bouhana is Associate Professor of Security and Crime Science at University College London, where she leads the Counter-Terrorism Research Group. Her research investigates chiefly the ecological processes involved in the emergence of extremism-enabling environments and the mechanisms which underpin the vulnerability to extremist moral change. Her work has been funded by the European Union, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Public Safety Canada, and the US National Institute of Justice (NIJ), among others. At present, she directs the $1M project “The Social Ecology of Radicalisation,” an international study supported by the US Department of Defense Minerva Initiative.

Dr. Joel Busher is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR), Coventry University, and chair of the CTPSR Working Group on P/CVE. His primary research interests are in the escalation, de-escalation and non-escalation of political violence; far right and anti-minority politics; and the implementation of counter-terrorism policy and its societal impacts. He has published extensively on these topics, and his book, The making of anti-Muslim protest: Grassroots activism in the English Defence League (Routledge), was awarded the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. He is an Associate Editor of Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression; a member of the editorial board of Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, joint editor of a forthcoming book, Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right), and of a forthcoming special issue of Perspectives on Terrorism on ‘Explaining restraint: Why some “militants” do not do as much violence as they could’. He tweets @joel_busher.

Neil Ferguson is a Professor of Political Psychology at Liverpool Hope University and recently served as a Visiting Research Fellow to the Changing Character of War Programme at Pembroke College, Oxford. His research has focused on political conflict and its psychological implications since he studied towards his PhD at the University of Ulster. He previously served as the Director of the Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies, a Research Fellow at University of St. Andrews, and lectured at the University of Ulster. Professor Ferguson recently served as a member of the Governing Council for the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). He also serves on the editorial committees of the Journal of Moral Education, Journal of Deradicalization and the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and is a trustee of the Journal of Moral Education Trust. His current research focuses on processes of engagement, involvement and disengagement from politically motivated violence focusing on paramilitary groups based in Northern Ireland. He has published in both psychological and politics journals, edited and contributed to a number of edited volumes and offered critical advice to various governments, security agencies and NGOs on issues around radicalization, terrorism, counter-terrorism and conflict transformation.

Christopher McDowell is Assistant Vice President (International) at City, University of London, and a Reader in Political Anthropology in the Department of International Politics. His research is on the politics of population displacement and forced migration in Asia, the Middle East, East and Central Africa and Europe, with a recent focus on the radicalisation of refugees and asylum seekers. This has included commissioned research for the UN on Syrian refugee resettlement, and a current GCRF funded project on coerced labour migration in south western Ethiopia.

Dr. Nicholas Wright is an affiliated scholar at Georgetown University, honorary research associate at University College London (UCL), Consultant at Intelligent Biology and Fellow at New America. His work combines neuroscientific, behavioural and technological insights to understand decision-making in politics and international confrontations, in ways practically applicable to policy. He leads international, interdisciplinary projects with collaborators in countries including China, the U.S., Iran and the UK. He was an Associate in the Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC and a Senior Research Fellow in International Relations at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has conducted work for the UK Government and U.S. Department of Defense. Before this he examined decision-making using functional brain imaging at UCL and in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He was a clinical neurologist in Oxford and at the National Hospital for Neurology. He has published academically (some twenty publications, e.g. Proceedings of the Royal Society), in general publications such as the Atlantic and Foreign Affairs, with the Pentagon Joint Staff (see www.nicholasdwright.com/publications) and has appeared on the BBC and CNN.

Wright received a medical degree from UCL, a BSc in Health Policy from Imperial College London, has Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), has an MSc in Neuroscience and a PhD in Neuroscience both, from UCL.

This speaker session supported SMA’s CENTCOM project. For additional speaker sessions and project publications, please visit the CENTCOM project page.