Papers by Michele Grossman
Terrorism and Political Violence, Apr 13, 2023
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Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Oct 8, 2022
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Islamophobia and Radicalization, 2018
Close friends and family members are often among the first to see early warning signs that someon... more Close friends and family members are often among the first to see early warning signs that someone close to them may be involved in violent extremist activity. The role of such ‘intimates’ in sharing information with authorities is critical to early interventions that can prevent greater harms from occurring, both for those at risk and for communities more generally. Grossman explores findings from path-breaking research in Australia (replicated in the UK in 2016–2017) which suggest that community reporting itself can be experienced as a ‘harm’ for intimates when it is linked to concerns about stigmatization, discrimination, shame and backlash. She argues for new approaches based on public health paradigms to improve trust, integrity, support, transparency and confidence in reporting mechanisms for families and communities.
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Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression
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This Country Report offers a detailed assessment of religious diversity and violent religious rad... more This Country Report offers a detailed assessment of religious diversity and violent religious radicalisation in the above-named state. It is part of a series covering 23 countries (listed below) on four continents. More basic information about religious affiliation and state-religion relations in these states is available in our Country Profiles series. This report was produced by GREASE, an EU-funded research project investigating religious diversity, secularism and religiously inspired radicalisation.This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 770640
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This CRIS submission to the Department of Justice and Community Safety is referenced at many poin... more This CRIS submission to the Department of Justice and Community Safety is referenced at many points in the Review of the Terrorism (Community Protection) Act. You can access the CRIS Submission here and read more about the review, including other submissions, on the Engage Victoria website. Mark Duckworth, Professor Michele Grossman
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Presses de L'Universite Montreal, 2021
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Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 2021
ABSTRACT In a well-known article, Marc Sageman (2014, The stagnation in terrorism research. Terro... more ABSTRACT In a well-known article, Marc Sageman (2014, The stagnation in terrorism research. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26(4)) foregrounds what he calls the ‘unbridgeable gaps’ between national security agencies and academics on the question of accessing and analysing the empirical data upon which innovative terrorism research depends. Yet while the divide between academic research and national security policy and practice can be pronounced, it is also mediated by the existence of common territory. This includes ideas about what constitutes ‘the public good’, despite bringing varied institutional, personal and philosophical approaches to how that good is understood and enacted. At their best, where these collaborations are embraced and nurtured, they can become unparalleled opportunities for expanded learning, constructive provocation and informed debate, bringing different forms of expertise to bear on understanding and reducing the risks and impacts of terrorism. At their worst, they can be minefields of compromised independence, ethical and reputational wounds, censorship, exploitation, and hollow research and policy agendas. We take up these issues through an edited collaborative dialogue between an academic and a national security practitioner, drawing on both the scholarly literature and our own experience as collaborators to explore the benefits, conflicts and risks of academic-national security collaboration.
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This chapter guides readers back to the need for a criticalunderstanding of how language co-const... more This chapter guides readers back to the need for a criticalunderstanding of how language co-constitutes identity, and importantlyhow the ‘translocal’ intersects with global flows and transmigration.Drawing on intercultural relationships and dialogues with Nubawomen in Australia, the chapter problematizes shifting and sometimesfictive national and ethnic boundaries. Importantly, it encourages thoseinvolved in resettlement to work harder toward providing opportunities forthe South Sudanese diaspora living in this region and elsewhere to makeself-determined choices about community language maintenance andpreservation.
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Applied Theatre Research, 2019
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This case study is part of a series of in-depth reports on religiously motivated violent radicali... more This case study is part of a series of in-depth reports on religiously motivated violent radicalisation - and resilience to it - in 12 countries. The series examines periods in which religious radicalisation and violence has escalated and analyses relevant policy and political discourses surrounding them. While seeking to identify factors that drove radicalisation and violence in each country, the case studies also critically assess programmes of prevention and resilience-building, identifying good practices. This series was produced by GREASE, an EU-funded research project investigating religious diversity, secularism and religiously inspired radicalisation.This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 770640
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This Country Profile provides a brief overview of religious diversity and its governance in the a... more This Country Profile provides a brief overview of religious diversity and its governance in the above-named state. It is one of 23 such profiles produced by GREASE, an EU-funded research project investigating religious diversity, state-religion relations and religiously inspired radicalisation on four continents. More detailed assessments are available in our multi-part Country Reports and Country Cases.This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 770640
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Global Perspectives on the Politics of Multiculturalism in the 21st Century, 2014
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Papers by Michele Grossman
Virtually no publicly available evidence-based research exists in Australia or elsewhere that solicits community views on what reporting means for community members, or explicitly addresses perceptions and concerns from vulnerable communities. The current project thus breaks new ground in seeking to identify community knowledge and concerns around reporting processes, to propose new understandings and approaches to community reporting based on these insights, and to develop new platforms for community education, awareness and increased willingness to report based on the data gathered and analysed here.
Community Reporting Thresholds has a special focus on what we have called ‘intimates’ reporting – that is, what it may mean to bring forward concerns to authorities about a close relative or friend. This marks a movement away from previous campaigns focused on community reporting in Australia, the US and the UK, which have concentrated instead on reporting by the general community of observed activity or behaviour that may be suspicious or concerning from national security perspectives to law enforcement and security agencies. While certainly valuable as an information, detection and prevention resource, general community reporting is only part of the story, and gaining new knowledge about the dynamics of ‘intimates’ reporting addresses a critical blind-spot in current CVE thinking and strategies.
Such individuals are ideally placed to notice any changes or early warning signs that someone is considering violent action to harm others, as well as being able to influence vulnerable younger people away from violent extremist beliefs and settings. The willingness of those close to potential or suspected violent actors to come forward and share their knowledge and concerns with authorities is thus a critical element in efforts to prevent violent extremist action. However, whilst these ‘intimates’ have a vital role to play against potential terrorist threats and offer a first line of defence, very little is known about what reporting of the potential violent extremist involvement of an ‘intimate’ means for community members, particularly their views, experiences and concerns about approaching authorities, especially the police, when they have suspicions or knowledge to report.
This data collection for this study occurred in the first half of 2017, when concern about losing young Australians to foreign violent extremist conflict was at its peak. This concern followed the emergence of Islamic State (IS) in 2014 and the 110+ Australians known to have travelled to foreign conflict zones in Syria and Iraq since then, as well as others who attempted but failed for various reasons to join overseas conflict. The dynamics associated with such conflict have shifted over the past year as IS territorial control in Syria and Iraq has been wound back by military interventions, and as the Australian government has introduced a series of measures to reduce or prevent overseas travel for the purpose of joining violent foreign conflict. An increasing danger is thus now the appeal to young people of domestic violent extremism as a more achievable avenue than involvement in foreign conflict. To account for this shift, the focus of our research for this project reflects the rise in young people joining domestic violent conflict and includes interviews with family members of young people who radicalised to violent extremism locally, and then plotted violent extremist acts in Australia.
This project presents us with an opportunity to understand how, from the perspectives of their families, young people have become involved in joining violent conflict and the impacts of their involvement upon family members. The research findings here have been used by our community research partner, Victorian Arabic Social Services, to develop community-based education and awareness resources (see ‘Considerations for the Future’ below) to support families in helping mitigate both young people’s involvement in violent extremist activity and the ability of families to access appropriate support and intervention in such circumstances.
The Stocktake Report identifies key themes and findings from a systematic literature and selected programs review, as well as critical knowledge gaps and practical recommendations that can guide policymaking, research and program investment and direction.
The systematic research literature review examined research conducted 2011-2015 in order to answer two key questions:
1. What factors influence, lead to, or protect against racial, ethnic or religious exclusivism?
2. How do social cohesion and community resilience address these factors in ways that mitigate socially harmful dimensions of exclusivism such as racism, intolerance and violent extremism?
Racism and Islamist-based violent extremism have emerged as the most prominent themes arising from the literature search. Beyond Australian scholarship, the search yielded research evidence and perspectives from the United Kingdom, European and North American scholarly sources. Many valuable insights and findings from these sources also apply directly to or resonate in the Victorian context. Key themes identified in recent research revolve around:
• Understanding ‘new’ or cultural racism, including Islamophobia
• Violent extremism: causes, influences and protections
• The role of social cohesion in addressing exclusivism
• The role of community resilience in addressing exclusivism
The selected program review involved a combination of electronic database and manual search strategies to identify relevant national and overseas programs designed to redress exclusivism, strengthen social cohesion and inclusion, and counter violent extremism (CVE).
This research report was commissioned by the State of Victoria through the Community Resilience Unit of the Department of Premier and Cabinet in order to assist understanding these complex issues. The research report does not constitute Victorian Government policy.
This in turn reflects the current emphasis in international CVE policy and thinking on not only of “whole of government” but also “whole of society” efforts, both to identify and act on early warning signs of radicalisation to violence at the micro-level of families and social networks, and also to address pre-emptively some of the enabling conditions that erode social cohesion and community resilience, leaving people vulnerable to terrorist appeal and recruitment strategies. It also reflects developing sophistication in how we understand the dynamic processes of radicalisation to violence, which have successfully resisted efforts to uniformly profile terrorist pathways, throwing into sharp relief the importance of tailored, localised programmes for early identification and support of those at risk of violent radicalisation.
Despite the importance of early reporting by intimates of those radicalizing to violence, virtually no evidence-based research has been conducted in Australia or elsewhere until now that solicits community views on what reporting means for community members, or explicitly addresses experiences, perceptions and concerns from Australian Muslim communities experiencing increased scrutiny and pressure around countering-violent-extremism reporting imperatives.
Based on recently completed research with Australian Muslims and government stakeholders on community reporting thresholds for violent extremism, key study findings suggest that AustralianMuslim community members see reporting to authorities as a last resort. There are significant psychosocial, cultural and structural barriers to sharing concerns related to individual and community sentiment. These involve perceived impact of reporting on social networks and relationships; flawed or confusing reporting processes and channels; lack of trust in government; lack of confidence in protective rather than punitive reporting outcomes for those at risk; lack of support for those who report as well as those reported on, and general anxiety about the personal, social, religious and legal impacts and consequences of reporting. A new approach to community education and awareness about reporting is needed, combined with new mechanisms to improve the integrity, support structures and transparency of the reporting process from community perspectives.