1st PAVE Progress and General Assembly Meeting

The PAVE partners gathered virtually on March 10-11, 2021, for our first progress meeting and to celebrate the accomplishments of our first year. As our work package leaders reported, in all three core thematic clusters of PAVE (cumulative extremisms, the interface of state and religious institutions and online and offline (de)radicalization), all partners have finished their research design phase, set their methodological foundations, achieved ethics approvals and selected field sites in the seven case study countries. The country team leads reported more in depth on the research preparations and how the engagement with local stakeholders have added to their thinking and planning. In two thematic sessions, the participants discussed their operationalisation of the concept of ‘resilience’, and as a special treat, two eminent members of PAVE’s Advisory Board joined for a session to reflect on the impact of the corona pandemic on the dynamics of resilience and radicalisation in their communities. The Grand Mufti of Bosnia (Emeritus) Dr. Mustafa Ceric and Sheikh Mohamed Abu Zeid from Lebanon offered some opening remarks and a rich discussion ensued on how increasing inequalities as a result of the covid-19 crisis might be exploited to serve radicalisation purposes. Despite the challenging circumstances of the pandemic, which added previously unknown levels of insecurity to our planning, we are happy to announce that we are still well on track with the project implementation and are about to start our fieldwork phase.