Gender and Radicalization
Monday 26 July 2021 at 18:00 Brussels time/12:00 EST
More women and girls join the ranks of terrorist groups, opening new questions regarding recruitment and gender roles. As the West debates how to deal with female returnees from Syria and Iraq, we find that the issue of gender is far more complex and pertinent than publicly acknowledged.
Seran de Leede is a research and author whose focus is on the gender dimension of political violence, extremist discourse, and terrorism. She is an independent researcher and an associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), The Hague. Most recently, she co-authored a toolkit for professionals working with Islamist radicalized women and girls.
Stephanie Foggett is Director of Global Communications at The Soufan Group. She leads on strengthening engagement with media and strategic partners on matters relating to international security, counterterrorism and geopolitics. Her areas of expertise include: global terrorism and counterterrorism; terrorism and extremism online and in the information space; Islamic State (ISIS) foreign fighters and families; the rise of white supremacy extremism; and emergent security challenges.
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D., is Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine. She has interviewed over 700 terrorists, their family members and supporters in various parts of the world including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union and the Middle East.
Barbara Matias, TACTICS Institute for Counter-Terrorism.
Barbara Matias has served as NATO Programme Officer to the training mission in Iraq and was the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Relief Crisis Center’s Team Lead on NATO-EU coordination. Ms Matias was previously based in Kosovo, working on the dialogue with Serbia and EU enlargement. She has also served at EUROJUST; the Portuguese diplomatic missions in Austria and Sweden, and as human rights researcher at a Greek refugee camp. Bárbara was a Fulbright graduate scholar at the Human Rights MA Program of Columbia University. She speaks six languages and is a regular contributor to several think-tanks.
