Michele Grossman
Professor Michele Grossman has led academic research on preventing and countering violent extremism for over a decade, in particular through her roles as Director of the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS) and Convenor of the AVERT (Addressing Violent Extremism and Radicalisation to Terrorism) Research Network at Deakin University in Australia. Professor Grossman conducts qualitative research focused on understanding how best to engage communities in preventing violent extremism, and on building resilience to violent extremism for both communities and governments. She is widely published in the area of resilience to violent extremism and on issues related to working with communities to foster better awareness and understanding around early intervention in radicalisation trajectories.
She earned her PhD in Cultural Studies in 2005 at Monash University in Australia. She has led a range of national and international research projects on areas including understanding community reporting thresholds on violent extremism to authorities by close friends and families; the roles of women in both supporting and opposing violent extremism; building youth resilience to violent extremism, and reintegrating women and children returning from violent extremist foreign conflict zones. She is the author of over 80 journal articles and book chapters, and partners with a wide range of international and national community organisations and government agencies through her research. Her work has been supported by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) in the UK, the National Institute of Justice in the USA, Public Safety Canada, the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 and a range of Australian Government agencies and funding schemes.
She is a Robert Schuman Distinguished Scholar Fellow at European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in connection with her role on the Horizon 2020 GREASE project, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Huddersfield’s School of Education and Professional Development. Her ground-breaking research on community reporting thresholds for sharing information with authorities about violent extremism has been replicated in multiple countries, and her work with colleagues on assessing youth resilience to violent extremism, the BRAVE measure, has also been used in a variety of national and regional contexts. She is a member of the Commonwealth CVE Secretariat Pool of Experts and has contributed to national parliamentary inquiries as an expert witness on extremist movements and radicalism in Australia.
Professor Grossman is a passionate believer in the importance of providing a robust, collaboratively developed and research-informed evidence base through which strong policy and practice outcomes can be achieved to help identify and harness innovation in countering violent extremism in a swiftly evolving and volatile global landscape.