Partners

DARE is a collaborative project involving 17 partners drawn from academic institutions, civil society groups and practitioners from media and de-radicalisation organisations. The project is coordinated by Professor Hilary Pilkington, The University of Manchester.

The University of Manchester

The University of Manchester has a distinguished history in research, innovation and enterprise stretching over 75 years. The university has over 12,000 members of staff and a student population of almost 40,000, making it the largest single-site university in the UK.

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) employs over 180 academic staff across the six discipline areas of Economics, Politics, Sociology, Social Statistics, Social Anthropology and Philosophy. SoSS is one of the top three Schools of Social Sciences in the country (alongside Oxford and the London School of Economics) and is home to more than 500 postgraduate students.

Research in SoSS is known for being theoretically informed, empirically grounded, methodologically innovative and policy relevant.

Anadolu University

Anadolu University (AU) was established in 1982 in Eskisehir and has gained reputation as a dynamic and innovative institution in Turkey. It is a large institution, promoting universal higher education values and blazing trails in higher education.

AU has 16 faculties (three of which offer distance education), four applied schools, four vocational schools, nine graduate schools, 25 research centres and 15 R&D and application units. The successful launch of the distance education system ranks at the top of innovative initiatives at Anadolu University; over one million students are enrolled in these programmes across three faculties.

At Anadolu University, there are over 1900 faculty members with national and international experience and many leading researchers and artists in the country serve as either full-time or visiting academic staff. All academic staff are committed to sharing their knowledge and experience with students.

Collegium Civitas University

Collegium Civitas (CIV) is a modern, non-state higher education institution established in 1997 in Warsaw, Poland. It operates under the auspices of the five institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The experience and commitment of its founders and faculty members have earned it a reputation as a prestigious place to study international relations and social and political sciences in Polish and English.

The DARE project will be located both in the Centre for the Sociological Interventions (CIS), and at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism. As part of the project, CIV will co-lead WP3 (Counter-radicalisation policy and interventions: Review and evaluation) and will contribute to WPs 7, 8, 9 and 10.

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

The EHESS, founded in 1947 in France, has the privileged status of grand établissement. This academic institution functions similarly to a doctoral or graduate school covering the whole spectrum of humanities and social sciences.

Its 250 chair professors and associate professors have the task of training their master’s and Doctoral students in research but also conduct graduate-level seminars on topics directly linked to their own research.

The Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar

The Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar (IPI) is a public institute in the Republic of Croatia. Its primary mission is to conduct high-quality interdisciplinary scientific and professional research in the field of social sciences and humanities.

Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Science

The Research Unit on Right-Wing Extremism (FORENA) is situated at Hochschule Düsseldorf’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies. Founded in 1987, it has a long tradition in researching the far right’s history and its ideological formations but also how and why it followers might turn to more radical kinds of thought and action.

FORENA’s approach is not about individualizing the problems of right-wing extremism and racism but analysing them as core problems from a social theory perspective. Recent research is on the rise of right-wing populism and anti-Muslim racism in Germany and Europe.

European Network Against Racism

ENAR is a strong pan-European network of anti-racism non-profit organisations (NGOs) that combines a Europe-wide advocacy for racial equality with the facilitation of cooperation among civil society, anti-racist actors across Europe. ENAR founders contributed to the adoption of the Race and Employment Equality Directives in 2000

Following its formal establishment, ENAR became a direct interlocutor of the EU institutions on racial equality, committed to monitoring the transposition and implementation of EU equality legislation.

In DARE, ENAR will co-lead WP9 (Countering radicalisation through dialogue) and WP10 (Societal impact, scientific and public engagement) drawing on its extensive grassroots network to maximise the reach and impact of the project.

The German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies (GIRDS)

The German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies (GIRDS) is a German research and network initiative focusing solely on the theory and practice of de-radicalization and counter-radicalization. GIRDS is completely non-profit and independent.

The Higher School of Economics

The Higher School of Economics (HSE) is a leader in Russian education. Since its founding in 1992, it has developed from an economics institute into a comprehensive university, based in Moscow, with branches in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Perm.

Leiden University

The Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of Leiden University, in The Netherlands, is an internationally acclaimed academic knowledge hub that studies world-wide issues from the varied perspectives of governance, politics, law, sociology and economics.

Oslo Metropolitan University

Oslo Metropolitan University is Norway’s third largest university, with a student body of approximately 16,000 students and 1,850 employees. OsloMet has long-standing experience with participating in international projects and has, for example, coordinated one Horizon 2020 project on young people in Europe.

Panteion University

Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences of Athens is one of the largest and most historic public universities in Greece. It was founded in 1930 by the “Educational Renaissance” Association under the name of the Free School of Political Economics.

Today, Panteion University has around 250 academic staff, 18,500 students across four schools and nine academic departments as well as six postgraduate programmes with 1,500 students. Panteion University hosts three Research Institutes, 18 Research Centres and four Laboratories staffed by highly trained and experienced academics, as well as postgraduate and doctoral students.

The University of Sfax

The University of Sfax, located in the Tunisia’s second city, was founded in 1986. It has more than 48,500 students and eight faculties. The Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Sfax (FLSHS), where the DARE team members are based, has 6,200 students and employs over 110 academic staff.

Members of the DARE team are drawn from Sfax University as well as the University of El Maner (Tunis) and collaborate in research through the ECUMUS (Etat, Culture et Mutations de société) research group. This group has conducted extensive research on issues of youth, inequality and identity including empirical studies of contemporary social issues including youth suicide and youth social exclusion.

The University of Oslo

The University of Oslo (UiO) was founded in 1811, and is the oldest and largest university in Norway. It has 27000 students and 7000 staff members. UiO comprises eight faculties, in addition to the Viking ships museum, the Historical museum, the Natural history museum and the Main library. UiO is ranked among the 100 top universities in the world. UiO’s annual budget is BNOK 6.6, most of which is financed by the Ministry of Education and Research, in addition to the Norwegian Research Council and the European Commission through its research programmes. The Center for Research on Extremism: The Extreme Right, Hate Crime and Political Violence (C-REX), at the University of Oslo is a multi-disciplinary center for the study of right-wing extremism, hate crime and political violence. C-REX is cross-disciplinary, with staff members from political science, sociology, social anthropology, religious studies, history, media studies, criminology, psychology, law, area studies, and peace studies.

Teesside University

History is a long-standing area of research excellence at Teesside University. History at Teesside hosts the Centre for Fascist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies (CFAPS), which focuses on the study of the far right and its opposition.

The People for Change Foundation

The People for Change Foundation‘s vision is of a just, fair and inclusive society where all members may reach their full potential unhindered by factors such as age, race, colour, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national origin, property, birth or other status. The Foundation operates at the intersection between law, policy and social science, delivering analysis that is practical in input and pragmatic in outcome.

The University of Birmingham

Founded in 1900, Birmingham was England’s first civic university, where students from all religions and backgrounds were accepted on an equal basis. The College of Social Sciences brings together over 360 academics across a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields.

The work impacts all areas of society grounded in the key disciplines of business, economics, education, government and society, and social policy. The Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology explores how policy and practice can contribute to making a difference in people’s lives – particularly those who may face disadvantage or social exclusion.

International advisory group

The DARE Project and the consortium members benefit from the support of an international advisory group made up of the following experts.

Sia Anagnostopoulou

Athanasia (Sia) Anagnostopoulou is currently the Alternate Minister of Education, Research and Religious Affairs and an associate professor of history at Panteion University. She has been a visiting professor at the New York University, the University of Cyprus and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. She is a specialist in nationalism in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, and colonialism in Cyprus.

Kalsoom Bashir

Kalsoom Bashir is co-director of Inspire, a counter-extremism and human rights organisation seeking to address inequalities facing Muslim women in Britain. Kalsoom has been the lead Prevention Officer for Bristol City Council, responsible for preventing violent extremism in consultation with Muslim communities. As part of her roles, she delivers projects that build capacity, including among young people and women, to challenge extremism. She serves on the National Muslim Women’s Advisory group and is seconded currently to Avon and Somerset police as a regional trainer.

Heidi Beirich

Dr. Heidi Beirich is an expert on various forms of extremism, including the white supremacist, nativist and neo-Confederate movements as well as racism in academia.

Jacques Dubucs

Jacques Dubucs is Director of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of France and researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. He heads the Strategic Working Group for Societal und Cultural Innovation in the EC’s European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

Fouad Gandoul

Fouad Gandoul is Regional manager for ACV, the largest Belgian union. He has master’s degrees in Political Science and in Public Law and Public Governance (VUB). He is active as a judge in labour law in the labour court in Hasselt.

He is co-founder of EmBem (Empowering Belgian Muslims), an organisation promoting education and (self) employment as a means to strengthen the civic engagement of the Muslim community within Belgian society.

Daniela Pisoiu

Dr Daniela Pisoiu is a Senior Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs. She brings in more than ten years of expertise in the area of radicalization, extremism and terrorism, in particular with respect to individual radicalization processes.

She has conducted numerous interviews with right-wing, Islamist and left-wing (former) violent extremists, writes regular policy papers and briefs and is advising the German and Austrian authorities in the areas of prevention and de-radicalisation.

Vidhya Ramalingam

Vidhya Ramalingam is Director of Moonshot CVE, which develops innovative methods of response to extremism and community violence. She is a Research Associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS, University of Oxford), a Fellow of the German Institute for the Study of Radicalization and Deradicalization (GIRDS) and member of the Advisory Board of Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks).

In 2014, she launched The Far-Right Extremism in Europe Initiative (The FREE Initiative) offering guidance and online learning for counter-extremism practitioners.

Kelly Simcock

Kelly Simcock is currently Director of Programme at the Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Peace Foundation (UK) where she plays a major role in the’ Rethinking Radicalisation’ review and report for Manchester City Council.

Kelly is also Co-chair of the European Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) Youth, Families and Communities Working Group which promotes engagement with – and empowerment of – youth, communities and families as critical in the prevention of radicalisation and in guiding practitioners in developing de-radicalisation strategies.

Elisabeth Staksrud

Dr Elisabeth Staksrud is deputy chair of the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH). Her research interests revolve around children and online risk, regulation and rights, online censorship and governance and research ethics.

In addition to the consortium members and the international advisory group, DARE involves active partnerships with:

  • National Stakeholder Groups (NSGs) in each of the participating countries.
  • Young people as producers and users of DARE research findings and outputs.