Jonathan Russell
International Director, Violence Prevention Network, Violence Prevention Network
2023
Jonathan Russell is International Director at Violence Prevention Network (VPN), Germany’s leading practitioner hub for the prevention of violent extremism.
He has more than a decade of experience in P/CVE, working across the public, private and civil society sector all over the world. Most recently he led terrorism prevention interventions for Meta’s Trust and Safety Policy team. He currently represents VPN on the Independent Advisory Committee for the Global Internet Forum for Counter-Terrorism (GIFCT), and previously sat on the Steering Committee of the European Commission’s Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) in his role as co-chair of the working group on Communications and Narratives.
He seeks to combine the worlds of strategic communications, technology, public health, international development, and national security to solve one of the toughest problems of our time. His aim is to scale and export VPN’s longstanding and successful deradicalisation and rehabilitation model globally to increase its impact and keep ever more societies safe. Part of this is continuing to evolve our approach to deal with the online-offline nexus of radicalisation, and building hyperlocal partnerships to apply our methodology to different contexts and institutions. VPN hopes to continue supporting RAN in its aims to support practitioners and policymakers to exchange best practices in P/CVE.
The Summit was more than empty words – it made clear that a solution-driven approach is the only way to fight hate. That’s why the working group activities, which are results driven are going to be critical in defeating violent extremism. The Summit brought together the best minds in government, private sector, academia, and civil society. Being surrounded by these experts sparked new ideas – some of which I’ve already implemented or have written about.
