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

Ariane Wolf

Co-Director

Ariane co-leads 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. She serves as co-chair for the Prison and Probation Working Group of the EC-funded EMISA Network, connecting practitioners from the EU and MENA region in matters of counterterrorism.

Rositsa Dzhekova

Senior Project Manager

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

Project Manager

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.

Hawa Noor Zitzmann

Mid-level Expert Position

Hawa brings in over a decade experience in human security research, peacebuilding programming and strategic communication. She worked for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and consulted for various agencies such as UN Women, UNDP, Kenya National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), Building Resilience to Civil Society (BRICS), Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC), Life and Peace institute (LPI) and the International Peace Support Training Centre (IPSTC). She has also held teaching responsibilities at the University of Bremen, Jacobs University and the University of Nairobi and was a visiting scholar at the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her latest assignment was research on processes of joining al-Shabaab in Somalia by Kenyan individuals.

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

P/CVE Consultant

Arwa is a Junior P/CVE expert at Violence Prevention Network. Arwa`s background as an Attorney at Law and her professional experience in working in diplomatic missions and international NGOs 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. Arwa is a consultant for the SIMVEX project and provides overall coordination for the CT Inflow project at VPN.

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.

Our partners