Overview

Introduction

Welcome to the website for the 2011 conference Terrorism, Radicalisation & De-Radicalisation, jointly organized by Egmont-Royal Institute for International Relations and the Department of Political Science at Ghent University. The Conference convenes in Brussels, Belgium, October 10, 2011.

This Conference is part of a long series of public and informal meetings on this topic since 2003. In that year the Belgian Egmont-Royal Institute for International Relations organised its first major conference in Brussels on international terrorism, under the heading ‘Root Causes of International Terrorism’. At that moment the very notion that there existed underlying forces that shaped the context and causes that led to 9/11, looked self-evident to academics, but was still very much a taboo word in policy circles. From the start, it was the intention of bringing together officials, academics and observers in a joint effort to enhance our understanding of the complexities of this ‘new’ terrorist campaign.

At the 2011 Conference the new edition of Jihadi terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge will be presented. The speakers all contributed to this (or the earlier) edition of the The volume. American or European, they all share a common concern of avoiding stereotypes when dealing with complex issues as terrorism and radicalisation.

Please browse this site using the navigation menu to the left.
To register for the Conference, click on ‘Practical Information’. To explore the new edition of Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge: European and American Experiences, click on ‘The Volume’.
Throughout the Conference, the volume will be available at a discounted rate (20 €) !

Rik Coolsaet

Conference

By the time of Osama bin Laden’s death, al-Qaeda’s mastermind no longer represented the Robin Hood icon that once stirred global fascination. May 2011 merely marks the symbolic end of an era. Ten years after the 11 September 2001 attacks, jihadi terrorism had largely lost its juggernaut sheen. It repeated the same curve its historical predecessors had gone through: rise – consolidation – fragmentation – demise.

This conference launches the 2011 edition of Jihadi Terrorism and The Radicalisation Challenge (Ashgate). Paramount at the conference will be two issues that remain largely unexplored in contemporary terrorism debates and research. One is the historical and comparative analysis that needs to be rehabilitated as a way to grasp the essence of terrorism. The jihadi strand of terrorism shared crucial similarities with earlier forms of radicalisation and terrorism and differences appeared generally not fundamental. The Oslo attacks of July 2011 make this endeavor all the more urgent in order to be able to identify the rise of possible new strands of terrorist campaigns. The second issue, that will be critically assessed, is the very concept of radicalisation. Once considered a quintessential European phenomenon, now the United States too has experienced how some of its citizens radicalise into terrorist violence. But does the concept of radicalisation merit its reputation as the holy grail of terrorism studies, since it often lacks conceptual clarity and empirical validation?

Top