PERIL Global

PERIL Global seeks a world in which prevention approaches are as important as securitized ones in the fight against extremist violence. We seek common strategies to the challenges of democratic resilience. The PERIL Global team works to build international dialogue, learning, and partnership across national boundaries in order to enhance learning about promising practices in prevention and democratic resilience. This has included work on global pandemic conspiracy theories in partnership with foreign governments, in-person and virtual exchanges among practitioners, and the translation and adaptation of tools which are then tested for use across national populations.

3 Core Goals

Bolster dialogue and sharing of promising practices in prevention

Increase accessibility to resources, expertise, and lessons learned across borders, including with practitioners and experts in the Global South

Match the global circulation of hateful and antidemocratic content online with an equal effort to globally distribute and share evidence, resources, and innovative approaches to countering and preventing violence and harm

Webinar series: Researching the Far Right: Methods and Ethics

This webinar series, co-organized by PERIL and C-REX, aims to initiate and facilitate a much needed discussion about the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise when researching far right parties, protest movements, and violent actions.

The topics addressed in the webinars are largely inspired by the volume ‘Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice’ (Routledge, 2020) edited by Stephen Ashe, Joel Busher, Aaron Winter, as well as Graham Macklin from C-REX.

Learn More

Other Projects

Germany & USA COVID Response

This rapid response research study focused on understanding how the pandemic affected educators’ and social workers’ responses to radicalization risks. Over a four-month period at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, PERIL researchers conducted 29 interviews and 2 focus groups with practitioners in both Germany and the United States. The overarching objectives centered on gaining further insights into current responses to online radicalization, successful strategies to counter online radicalization, and how they were affected by the wider context of the pandemic.

Vaccine Hesitancy in French-Speaking Regions

This study analyzed anti-vaccine and COVID-denialist media across francophone regions worldwide. It found that while content across regions was similar, its reception varied significantly based on local cultural assumptions and historical experience. This study served as the foundation for a public health messaging campaign developed by the government of the UK.

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation - Social Cohesion

In the summer of 2022, PERIL sent three team members to join a cohort of 15 individuals across academia, journalism, and the arts for a two-month (and year-long virtual) residency in Berlin to jointly reflect on the topic of social cohesion. The goal was to generate new perspectives and solutions to the problem of eroding social cohesion in civil society, and how to combat rising populism and violent extremism across the globe.

German Prevention Study Tour Summer 2022

Seven PERIL team members visited Berlin, Germany in summer 2022 on a focused study tour of German prevention efforts as part of our ongoing work to create global dialogue around shared challenges related to polarization, extremism, social cohesion, inclusion, and prevention of violence.

C-Rex Webinar Series

In partnership with the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) in Oslo, PERIL co-hosts a monthly webinar series on the method and ethics of studying extremism.

Fulbright

In spring 2023, PERIL hosted Fulbright scholar Professor Tina Askanius, whose residency in Washington DC interrogated the American far right’s obsession with Swedish and Scandinavian culture and symbols.

Visiting Researcher: Dr. Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti

Dr. Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti has been a visiting researcher at PERIL in September. He has been researching the perspectives of far-right mainstreaming in Germany, environmental protests and radicalization.
Dr. Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti serves as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Civil Society Research, located at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. He is an active research member of the WZB ProtestMonitoring project, which focuses on studying protest and political radicalization in Germany. Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti’s research centers on protest dynamics and their effects, as well as discourse and media analysis, with a particular emphasis on far-right politics. His expertise lies in employing a diverse range of quantitative methods, including text analysis, protest event analysis, and survey methods. In 2022, Daniel Saldivia Gonzatti successfully obtained his Ph.D. from the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne. During his doctoral studies, he actively contributed to the Decentralization and Electoral Geographies project.

Division