Background

Recent research highlights a major gap in gender-sensitive data and analysis within efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE). Traditional counterterrorism policies have often been gender-blind, merely including women without addressing deeper gender and diversity dynamics. There is a need to integrate feminist and intersectional perspectives into research design, data collection and analysis to understand how unequal socialization can contribute to radicalisation.

To build lasting security, it is crucial to examine the gender-specific drivers of violent extremism—such as community belonging, social ties, trauma, and empowerment narratives—and to improve the understanding of how gender shapes both radicalization and prevention.

The project

The AMALTHEA project will address the challenge of limited access to knowledge, collaboration and unified approaches against gender-related radicalisation via in-depth research and delivery of innovation in three complementary fields:

1. Knowledge creation, targeting Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), social support professionals, teachers and other P/CVE practitioners;
2. Knowledge modelling, management and sharing to improve understanding of the role of gender in VE/CVE; and
3. Tailor-made tools for LEAs and CSOs that will enable engagement, collaboration, efficient policy making and optimised decision making towards de-radicalisation.

AMALTHEA at a glance

• Identifying the role of AMALTHEA towards the vision of the next era of identification, comprehension and prevention
  of extremism and radicalisation activities focusing on the gender dynamic behind them, and the exact, updated needs of
  the LEAs and other stakeholders in the wider ecosystem that need to be addressed towards this direction
• The AMALTHEA Baseline, defining the baseline and the research protocol for the role of gender in extremism and radicalisation activities
• Analysis of the sources, socioeconomic factors and related impacts for radicalisation and extremism in different societies
• Designing and delivering an intelligent collaborative simulation platform for various stakeholders
• Preparing and delivering multilingual, GenAI-fuelled training packages for LEAs and NGOs
• Enabling in-depth analyses of regulatory frameworks
• Deploying an intelligent recommendation engine combined with a decision support mechanism for LEAs
• Ensuring collaboration and integration with the EUROPOL innovation lab
• Deploying a transferable validation protocol for AMALTHEA, finetuning the pilots’ scenarios and execution protocol,
  and ensuring continuous monitoring of piloting activities
• Ensuring continuous ethical and legal monitoring of validation procedures
• Raising awareness about the project concept, developments and findings to all key actors (Technology providers, LEAs, academics, policy makers, general public) by participating and organising outreach activities, international events (e.g., conferences and seminars) and INFO days
• Create a marketing strategy that focuses on commercialization