Convening

Summary

Between September 3-6, 2019, the RESOLVE Network, together with the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies, organized a three-and-a-half-day private training with regional experts and researchers in Prishtina, Kosovo. The Making Sense of Violent Extremism: Training and Toolkit for Research seeks to provide individuals, institutions, and organizations with resources and guidance on conceptualizing, designing, and undertaking research focused on violent extremism and terrorist dynamics. Drafted with and informed by the input and experience of experts in the field, the toolkit provides insight and recommendations on conceptual, methodological, ethical, and security challenges that researchers commonly face. The training and toolkit incorporate lessons learned from researching violent extremism, both broadly and within specific regional contexts. The regional context of focus for this training is the Western Balkans. The toolkit and training also provide insights and guidance on crafting research recommendations for policy and practitioner audiences.

The toolkit and training are supplemented by chapters from the RESOLVE Network’s forthcoming edited volume, Researching Violent Extremism: Contexts, Methods, and Ethics, which details personal researcher experiences and recommendations from a broad global scale, with an annex focusing on researcher experiences in a specific region. The regional overlay in the first edition of the training and Edited Volume focuses on researching violent extremism in the Western Balkans.