About the DARE Project
The DARE (Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality) project includes 15 partners in 13 countries - Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Malta, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, The Netherlands, Tunisia, Turkey and the UK - and will run for four years. Funded under the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, it will investigate young people’s encounters with messages and agents of radicalisation, how they receive and respond to those calls, and how they make choices about the paths they take.
It aims to broaden understanding of radicalisation, demonstrate that it is not located in any one religion or community, and to explore the effects of radicalisation on society.
DARE will focus on people aged between 12 and 30, as they are a key target of recruiters and existing research suggests they may be particularly receptive to radicalism. It will approach young people neither as victims nor perpetrators of radicalisation, but as engaged, reflexive, often passionate social actors who seek information they can trust, as they navigate a world in which calls to radicalisation are numerous.
It will focus on environments in which radicalisation messages are found, rather than terrorist events or individuals. By observing everyday encounters, researchers will be able to study people who hold radical ideas without becoming extremists, and thus help to understand what pushes others across the threshold into violence. Perhaps most importantly, this social approach will allow the researchers to map and understand the everyday strategies already used to challenge radicalisation, and to recognise the potential for people to influence their peers positively.
Through sustained engagement in the lives of young people navigating personal and collective uncertainty and insecurity, DARE aims to critically review existing, and generate high quality new, empirical data that will raise the bar in radicalisation studies and significantly improve our understanding of the scope, origins, causes and psychological, emotional and social dynamics of radicalisation.
The research is directly linked to policy and practice objectives stakeholders from different countries are involved through various committees and among its outputs will be educational toolkits for use with young people in formal and informal educational settings, and a toolkit for evaluating existing de-radicalisation programmes.
It aims to broaden understanding of radicalisation, demonstrate that it is not located in any one religion or community, and to explore the effects of radicalisation on society.
DARE will focus on people aged between 12 and 30, as they are a key target of recruiters and existing research suggests they may be particularly receptive to radicalism. It will approach young people neither as victims nor perpetrators of radicalisation, but as engaged, reflexive, often passionate social actors who seek information they can trust, as they navigate a world in which calls to radicalisation are numerous.
It will focus on environments in which radicalisation messages are found, rather than terrorist events or individuals. By observing everyday encounters, researchers will be able to study people who hold radical ideas without becoming extremists, and thus help to understand what pushes others across the threshold into violence. Perhaps most importantly, this social approach will allow the researchers to map and understand the everyday strategies already used to challenge radicalisation, and to recognise the potential for people to influence their peers positively.
Through sustained engagement in the lives of young people navigating personal and collective uncertainty and insecurity, DARE aims to critically review existing, and generate high quality new, empirical data that will raise the bar in radicalisation studies and significantly improve our understanding of the scope, origins, causes and psychological, emotional and social dynamics of radicalisation.
The research is directly linked to policy and practice objectives stakeholders from different countries are involved through various committees and among its outputs will be educational toolkits for use with young people in formal and informal educational settings, and a toolkit for evaluating existing de-radicalisation programmes.
The objectives of the DARE project are:
- To understand radicalisation trends in historical, spatial and political context including their interaction and potential for cumulative effect.
- To identify new trends in receptivity to radicalisation especially in relation to youth and gender and extend the field to the study of non-radicalisation trajectories.
- To investigate the interaction of structure and agency in radicalisation through the intersection of societal (macro), group (meso) and individual (micro) factors in individual trajectories.
- To enhance understanding of the role of inequality and perceived injustice in radicalisation.
- To understand the relative significance of religion, ideology and extra-ideological (affective) dimensions of radicalisation and how they are interwoven.
- To develop new evaluation and intervention toolkits to counter radicalisation and maximise their impact through active collaboration with policy maker and civil society organisation stakeholders.
The DARE Work Plan: 3 Blocks, 10 Work Packages
The DARE Project is conceived as three integrated blocks of work running in parallel with each other but internally staged to allow the findings from one block to inform research design and data analysis in another block at key milestones. Block 1(Critical review and evaluation) consists of WPs 2-4 which together generate an extensive review of knowledge in three areas: the historical context of current patterns of radicalisation (WP2); European, national and regional counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation policies and interventions (WP3); and how sustained inequalities impact upon radicalisation (WP4). Block 2 (Empirical research: offline and online milieus) consists of WPs 5-7 which generate new empirical research designed to understand: media-assisted self-radicalisation (WP5); radicalisation in Islamist milieus (WP6); and radicalisation in anti-Islam(ist) (extreme right) milieus (WP7). Block 3 (Integration, Impact and Public Engagement) consists of WPs 8-10 all of which integrate research data with policy and intervention and maximise societal impact and reach. WP8 integrates findings and analyses from WPs 2-7 on the question of Islamist and anti-Islam(ist) radicalisations as well systematically comparing findings across Islamist and anti-Islam(ist) radicalisation on key research themes. These integrated findings are used in WP10 to generate policy briefs for targeted audiences. WP9 brings into dialogue researchers, civic organisations and activists working in counter radicalisation to share experience and best practice across Europe and to develop, pilot and evaluate two counter-radicalisation educational toolkits. WP10 takes place across the duration of the project and maximises the societal impact of the knowledge and interventions generated by DARE. All three blocks are supported by WP1 (Management and Research Governance), which runs throughout the course of the project and consists of tasks crucial to successful start-up, maintenance and delivery of objectives and deliverable outputs.
The DARE Project is conceived as three integrated blocks of work running in parallel with each other but internally staged to allow the findings from one block to inform research design and data analysis in another block at key milestones. Block 1(Critical review and evaluation) consists of WPs 2-4 which together generate an extensive review of knowledge in three areas: the historical context of current patterns of radicalisation (WP2); European, national and regional counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation policies and interventions (WP3); and how sustained inequalities impact upon radicalisation (WP4). Block 2 (Empirical research: offline and online milieus) consists of WPs 5-7 which generate new empirical research designed to understand: media-assisted self-radicalisation (WP5); radicalisation in Islamist milieus (WP6); and radicalisation in anti-Islam(ist) (extreme right) milieus (WP7). Block 3 (Integration, Impact and Public Engagement) consists of WPs 8-10 all of which integrate research data with policy and intervention and maximise societal impact and reach. WP8 integrates findings and analyses from WPs 2-7 on the question of Islamist and anti-Islam(ist) radicalisations as well systematically comparing findings across Islamist and anti-Islam(ist) radicalisation on key research themes. These integrated findings are used in WP10 to generate policy briefs for targeted audiences. WP9 brings into dialogue researchers, civic organisations and activists working in counter radicalisation to share experience and best practice across Europe and to develop, pilot and evaluate two counter-radicalisation educational toolkits. WP10 takes place across the duration of the project and maximises the societal impact of the knowledge and interventions generated by DARE. All three blocks are supported by WP1 (Management and Research Governance), which runs throughout the course of the project and consists of tasks crucial to successful start-up, maintenance and delivery of objectives and deliverable outputs.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 725349
