Over the years, a range of research centres, governmental agencies, academic journals, and departments devoted to the research on radicalisation have been established. Since 9/11, radicalisation has received increasing attention. Regrettably, in research, radicalisation has so far most commonly been presumed to be a unidirectional process, leading individuals, after being ideologically convinced, to endorse and employ violence. Moreover, research on radicalisation was until recently trapped between securitisational approaches, and socio-cultural, cognitive, and contextual explanations. Thus, radicalisation is seen as either 1) a security challenge caused by individuals or risk groups or 2) a process conditioned by deeper social, economic, and cultural structures. Furthermore, until recently, the lion’s share of policies and studies – and certainly public discourse – has focused on Islamist terror attacks and much research has employed the concept of radicalisation primarily to explain the habits and actions of predominantly young male second or third generation Muslims in Europe. This came at the expense of other secular and religious extremisms, of which radicalisation into right-wing extremism poses probably the greatest threat to democracies.
In view of all of this, VORTEX implements a research programme that has as a primary objective to lay the groundwork for an integrated, relevant and multidisciplinary study of radicalisation.
VORTEX’s doctoral candidates therefore
1. systematically collect primary data, both qualitative and quantitative, online and offline;
2. combine various disciplines of humanities and social sciences;
3. conduct research and take part in training in transnational and interdisciplinary settings, transcending geographical, sociopolitical, and scientific boundaries; and
4. take part in dialogues with professionals and civil society organisations engaged in prevention work.
