Who we are

Founded in 2004 in Berlin, Violence Prevention Network is one of Europe’s largest civil society organisations engaged in preventing and countering violent extremism. We work nationally and internationally, with over 120 practitioners, researchers and advisers in 10 regional offices across Germany and abroad.

Facilitating support informed by practitioners’ experiences

  • We have worked with over 1,800 individual cases of radicalised persons with an Islamist extremist and right-wing extremist background within prisons – and many more outside prison – to change violent behaviour and extremist mind-sets.
  • Violence Prevention Network pioneers solutions for multi-stakeholder partnerships to prevent and counter violent extremism by supporting and training public authorities, prison and probation services, police and security actors and civil society practitioners to facilitate effective prevention work.
  • Our unique case management process facilitates targeted cooperation between security and non-security stakeholders on a daily basis based on joint needs and risk assessments, security protocols, and effective communication and decision-making for tailored interventions.

Our vision and mission

We work to strengthen whole-of-society partnerships in the area of prevention, disengagement, deradicalisation, rehabilitation and reintegration – facilitating mutual learning and eye-to-eye cooperation among government agencies, local stakeholders, schools, refugee centres, civil society organisations and many more.

Whole-of-society approach

We are convinced that no state, organisation or individual can address violent extremism alone. It’s when a variety of actors come together to connect their ideas and resources in trusted collaboration that programmes for prevention of violent extremism can become effective and reliable – for partners, affected communities and the individuals that we work with.

Policy informed by practice

We work to empower first-line practitioners in playing an active role in the design, implementation and evaluation of multi-stakeholder efforts to address violent extremism. Integrating the experiences, voices and perspectives of practitioners more systematically in policy planning and programme design is key to make P/CVE efforts succeed in the implementation phase and reflect the needs on the ground.

Core Team

Jonathan Russell

Director

Jonathan leads our international department, driving strategy, business, and product development. He is a subject matter expert in P/CVE, having led teams in this domain for over a decade, delivering terrorism prevention interventions in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

Rositsa Dzhekova

Deputy Director

Rositsa supports the development, design and implementation of our international projects and consultancies, including as part of our engagement in the EC Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). Rositsa supports the RAN PRISONS Working Group as well as RAN in the Western Balkans. Having worked with civil society, the private sector and academia, Rositsa has over 13 years of research, police advise and project management experience in the field of security, criminal justice and home affairs. Her thematic focusses include the prison-exit continuum, far-right extremism and strengthening civil society’s role in P/CVE.

Sophie Scheuble

Deputy Director

Sophie’s areas of expertise include multi-agency approaches in the field of disengagement and rehabilitation, involvement of non-state actors in P/CVE and contemporary Salafism. She acts as a project manager of the EU-funded icommit project which focuses on strengthening multi-stakeholder collaboration in prevent work.

Alexandra Korn

Project Manager

Alexandra supports our work in the EC Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). She supports the RAN PRISONS Working Group, focusing on issues such as P/CVE training for prison staff, multi-agency cooperation and exit work. She is also involved in the implementation of activities within the framework of the EC RAN in the Western Balkans project, with a focus on violent right-wing extremism.

David Tschöp

Project Manager

David Tschöp is working for Violence Prevention Network since 2022 as a student assistant in both International and Research department. He studies Social Sciences in Master at Humboldt University in Berlin with a focus on Radicalization and Extremism, the formation of extremist attitudes (islamist, right-wing, populist) and statistics. He has working experience in the fields of International Politics (Federal Foreign Office) as well as by working for the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.

Niv Zonis

Project Manager

Niv Zonis is supporting the work of the EU Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN). He supports the RAN PRISONS Working Group, focusing on issues such as P/CVE training for prison staff, multi-agency cooperation and exit work. He has ten years of experience in teaching and training and is a topical expert for Holocaust research.

Chris Burdack

Financial Project Manager

Chris works in Financial Management and Acquisition, where he contributes to the mobilisation of project funding and the preparation of proposals, based on his former experience working with international and civil society organisations. He manages cooperations with agencies at the European and international level and develops project concepts in the field of P/CVE.

Arwa Ben Ahmed

Project Manager

Arwa Ben Ahmed is a P/CVE and legal Advisor for the International Department. Arwa`s background as an Attorney at Law and professional experience in working in diplomatic missions and international institutions enabled her to acquire a multidisciplinary expertise in public policy and project management of Counterterrorism and Extremism programmes, criminal justice reform, prisons and probation and collaboration with civil society.

Advisers

Judy Korn

Senior Adviser

Judy is co-founder and managing director of Violence Prevention Network and operates as a special advisor to our international projects. As part of our engagement in the EC Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) she acts as a quality manager within the RAN activities. She brings two decades of experience in areas such as right-wing extremism, prison-exit continuum and lobbying with excellent connections into national and European authorities and institutions.

Cornelia Lotthammer

Head of Communications

Cornelia is head of communication at Violence Prevention Network. She brings over two decades of experience in working on communication concepts for civil society organisations both off- and online. As part of our engagement in the EC Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) she acts as co-head of communication within the RAN activities. Her focus lies especially on extremism, conspiracy narratives and language related issues such as framing and gender.

Maximilian Ruf

Adviser

Maximilian is the deputy director of Violence Prevention Network’s research department, co-leading our efforts to improve the collaboration between research and practice in P/CVE. As part of our engagement in the EC Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) he is a contact point for the Rehabilitation WG and specialised papers. His current research focus lies on individual processes of disengagement and deradicalisation with the aim to improve evidence-based approaches to practical work and evaluation in this field.

Ariane Wolf

Senior Advisor

Ariane advises on our work in international networking, projects, strategic development and consultancies. Her thematic focusses include practice-based policy advice and impact assessment, gender, misogyny and extremism and exit programmes in prison and probation.

Our partners