Trauma, Adversity & Violent Extremism

The project focuses on understanding how trauma and adversity are implicated in violent extremism’s causes, processes and outcomes. It also considers the implications of these insights for intervention policy and practice.

Exploring the synergies between trauma, adversity and violent extremism, this project will synthesise existing knowledge, carry out conceptual and empirical research, and consolidate a multi-disciplinary community of researchers and practitioners working in this field. 

The project focuses on understanding how trauma and adversity are implicated in violent extremism’s causes, processes and outcomes. It also considers the implications of these insights for intervention policy and practice. The research takes a broad view of trauma, covering direct and indirect experiences of trauma, including adverse childhood experiences, personal, collective, cultural and historical trauma.

Through an evolving programme of work informed by a process of co-development enabled by significant stakeholder involvement, the research seeks to:

  • Synthesise existing knowledge about the multiple ways in which trauma and adversity are implicated in violent extremism
  • Bring together a multi-disciplinary working group of researchers and practitioners interested in evolving work in this field
  • Develop conceptual insights by mapping and interpreting the relationships between the dominant models used in research and practice across the fields of trauma, adversity and violent extremism
  • Carry out original research examining the collective processes and narratives associated with historical and collective trauma, and the individual level impacts and outcomes of trauma and adversity

Project resources

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