Bios
Mona Thakkar
Mona Thakkar is a Junior Research Fellow at ICSVE researching online extremism, radical narratives and propaganda setting strategies of Salafi Jihadist groups of ISIS, Al Qaeda and analyzing the impact of the ideological clashes in the Salafi Jihadi milieu on the geopolitics of the Middle East. Currently, she is pursuing her Master’s in West Asian Studies from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. Having a background in journalism, she has worked as a fixer and translator for German and Swiss News publications like SRF and Tages Zeitung. Mona is fluent in English, German, Hindi, with an intermediate understanding of the Arabic language.
Anne Speckhard
Anne Speckhard, Ph.D., is Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE). She serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and is an Affiliate in the Center for Security Studies, Georgetown University.
She has interviewed over 800 terrorists, violent extremists, their family members and supporters around the world, including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union and the Middle East. Over the past five years, she has conducted in-depth psychological interviews with 273 ISIS defectors, returnees and prisoners, as well as 16 al Shabaab cadres (as well as family members and ideologues,) studying their trajectories into and out of terrorism, and their experiences inside ISIS and al Shabaab.
Speckhard developed the ICSVE Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project from these interviews, which includes over 250 short counter narrative videos that mimic ISIS recruitment videos but contain actual terrorists strongly denouncing ISIS as un-Islamic, corrupt and brutal. These videos have been utilized in over 200 Facebook and Instagram campaigns globally. Beginning in 2020, she launched the ICSVE Escape Hate Counter Narrative Project, interviewing dozens of white supremacists and members of hate groups, developing counternarratives from their interviews, and creating anti-recruitment videos. She has also conducted rare interviews with five Antifa activists (Antifa protestors rarely grant interviews.)
Dr. Speckhard is also an expert in rehabilitation and repatriation of terrorists and their families. In 2007, she designed the psychological and Islamic aspects of the Detainee Rehabilitation Program in Iraq to be applied to 20,000+ detainees and 800 juveniles. This work led to consulting with foreign governments on issues of terrorist prevention, interventions and repatriation; and the rehabilitation and reintegration of ISIS foreign fighters, wives and children. She has worked with NATO, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), UN Women, United Nations Countering Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UNCTED), United Nations Office of Drug and Crime (UNODC), the EU Commission and EU Parliament, and to the U.S. Senate & House, Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Health & Human Services, and the FBI.
Today Dr. Speckhard actively trains key stakeholders in law enforcement, intelligence, elite hostage negotiation teams, educators, and other professionals in countering violent extremism, locally and internationally. Her focus is on the psychology of terrorism, the effective use of counter-narrative messaging materials produced by ICSVE, as well as studying the use of children as violent actors by groups such as ISIS. Her consultations and trainings include U.S., Canadian, German, British, Dutch, Austrian, Swiss, Belgian, Danish, Iraqi, Syrian, Jordanian and Thai national police and security officials, among others.
Dr. Speckhard is the author of five books: Homegrown Hate: Inside the Minds of Domestic Violent Extremists, Talking to Terrorists, Bride of ISIS, Undercover Jihadi, and ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate. She has appeared on CNN, BBC, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, CTV, CBC, and in the New York Times, Washington Post, London Times, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, Daily Beast, Media Line and more. She regularly writes a column for Homeland Security. Her research has been published in Global Security: Health, Science and Policy, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Journal of African Security, Journal of Strategic Security, the Journal of Human Security, Bidhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, Journal for Deradicalization, Perspectives on Terrorism and the International Studies Journal. Her academic publications are found at https://georgetown.academia.edu/AnneSpeckhard and here on the website under research publications and brief reports.
ICSVE’s Breaking the ISIS Brand and Escape Hate Counternarrative videos and training seminars can be watched on ICSVE’s YouTube channel.
ICSVE’s research has been funded by the EU Commission; U.S. Departments of State, Homeland Security, Defense and Justice; UN Women; and the Embassy of Qatar.
Follow @AnneSpeckhard
Sophia Abinajm
Sophia AbiNajm is a Research Fellow working on ICSVE’s Police Responses to Terrorism and Violent Extremism trainings. She is also assisting on ICSVE’s DOJ funded Hate Crimes and DOD’s Addressing Extremism in the U.S. Military projects. Previously Sophia assisted with the 2021 Capitol Hill riots interviews, Q-Anon and Escape Hate counter-narrative projects. Sophia graduated in 2021 with a major in Psychology and a minor in Forensic and Investigative Sciences and Criminology. She has a concentration in the sociology of violent crime and deviance. She has also studied crime scene investigation, the culture of illicit drugs and the biological bases of behavior.
Kathryn Duffy
Kathryn Duffy is serving as a Research Fellow for ICSVE working with our Department of Justice Hate Crimes grant, looking into campus protests relating to the Israeli/Hamas conflict and studying failures to control violence as well as winning strategies to prevent hate crimes and violence. Kathryn received both her Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Global Affairs from Rutgers University, where she concentrated on human security and global policy. Her research areas include violent extremism, radicalization/deradicalization with a focus on the U.S. and European regions, and the nexus between terrorism and crime. Kathryn is a recipient of several Rutgers Doctoral Fellowships and is a co-author of multiple peer-reviewed articles on security and resilience/building of vulnerable populations. She currently resides in Germany, speaks fluent German and has had formal educational training in French, Italian and Arabic.
Molly
Molly Ellenberg is a research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism [ICSVE]. Molly is a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Maryland. She holds an M.A. in Forensic Psychology from The George Washington University and a B.S. in Psychology with a Specialization in Clinical Psychology from UC San Diego. At ICSVE, she is working on coding and analyzing the data from ICSVE’s qualitative research interviews of ISIS and al Shabaab terrorists, as well as white supremacists, members of hate groups and conspiracy theorists; running Facebook campaigns to disrupt ISIS’s and al Shabaab’s online and face-to-face recruitment; and developing and giving trainings for use with the Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative Project videos. Molly has presented original research at the International Summit on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma, the GCTC International Counter Terrorism Conference, UC San Diego Research Conferences, and for security professionals in the European Union. She is also an inaugural member of the UNAOC’s first youth consultation for preventing violent extremism through sport. Her research has also been published in Psychological Inquiry, Global Security: Health, Science and Policy, AJOB Neuroscience, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, the Journal of Strategic Security, the Journal of Human Security, Bidhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, and the International Studies Journal. Her previous research experiences include positions at Stanford University, UC San Diego, and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
Noellynn Slaughter
Noellynn Slaughter is a Research Fellow at ICSVE assisting in research on US white supremacist organizations and also researching Islamic State Khorasan in Afghanistan and its relationship with ISIS, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistan, US and Coalition forces. Noellynn holds a master’s degree in Terrorism Studies from King’s College London, and a master’s degree in International Policy Studies from Middlebury Institute of International Studies. She is a military intelligence veteran, having served five years in the U.S. Air Force as a Russian Cryptologic Linguist. She has studied Russian, Modern Standard Arabic, French, and Lebanese Arabic. Noellynn is a U.S. Department of Defense contractor working in Security Cooperation at present and has previously presented research on female terrorists to counterterrorism experts from around the world. She has a background in Russian, Middle Eastern, Central, and South Asian studies, International Policy, Security, and Defense.
Neima Izadi
Neima Izadi is an administrative and junior research fellow at ICSVE. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminology, with a concentration in Homeland Security from George Mason University. He is interested in examining the role of interfaith groups and how they contribute to counterterrorism measures.
Maha Ghazi
Maha Ghazi is a research fellow at ICSVE studying the effects of ICSVE counternarratives in Arab countries, interviewing ex jihadists and working on issues of terrorist repatriation, rehabilitation and reintegration efforts. Maha is a Moroccan/ Egyptian Ph.D. candidate in University Mohamed V- Rabat (Morocco) in political and international studies. Her dissertation focuses on deradicalization programs in prisons, rehabilitation and reintegration of ex jihadist inmates. Maha’s Master’s thesis, with which she graduated with honors, analyzes the national strategies countering violent extremism inside prisons highlighting the Moroccan “Musalaha” program, launched in 2017. Maha Speaks Arabic (native: Classical, Moroccan, Egyptian and other dialects), English and French.
TM Garret
TM Garret Schmid (born Achim Schmid) and publicly known as TM Garret is an Extremism Researcher and Analyst at ICSVE and serves as an Advisor at present.
He is a German-American Public Speaker, Human Rights Activist, Consultant, Author, Extremism Researcher, Interfaith Activist and founder of C.H.A.N.G.E, a non-profit organization which engages in anti-racism and anti-violence campaigns, food drives, inter-faith work as well as an EXIT program which helps individuals leave extremist groups and ERASING THE HATE, a nationwide tattoo campaign and movement that covers up racist and hate tattoos for free. He is also the organizer of the Memphis Peace Conference in 2018 and founder of “Share a Meal Pledge.” Before he started engaging in Civil Rights work, TM Garret was a White Supremacist in leading roles in Europe and the USA. He left this lifestyle and ideology for good in 2003.
Garret works closely with the Jewish as well as the Black Community. He is a campus speaker against antisemitism for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a member of the NAACP. He is also a US ambassador for EXIT Germany and an honorary board member of “We Are Many-United Against Hate.”
TM Garret has lectured at Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, Boston Law School, Vanderbilt, Hotchkiss, Pomona and many other schools and universities. In 2019 he spoke at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield on behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal Center as well as the City Hall in New York City. He was featured on ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, VICE and VOX as well as the New York Magazine, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post and many other international major TV stations and outlets.
He is a radio personality and currently hosts ERASING THE HATE, a talk show on WKRA 92.7 FM The Change in Holly Springs, MS together with Pastor Ray Johnson. The show is syndicated on iHeart Radio, iTunes, Spotify, PlayerFM and many other platforms.
For more information, please visit www.tmgarret.com or his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM_Garret.
Hasan Suzen
Hasan Suzen, PhD candidate at University of Antwerpen, is currently studying on great power politics, political warfare, hybrid warfare, counter terrorism and extremism. He received two Master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the US Command and General Staff College in International Affairs and Security Studies.
Prior to joining Beyond the Horizon ISSG, and ICSVE EU as a research fellow, he obtained experience in counterterrorism in both operational and planning levels and worked as Strategic Foresight and Transformation Supervisor at Turkish General Staff HQ and Senior Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Analyst in Comprehensive Crisis and Operation Management Centre at NATO.
He is a regular writer at Political Insights and Beyond the Horizon, and gave lectures on defence reform, military transformation, and hybrid warfare.
His expertise areas are:
• Political warfare, information warfare, cyber defense
• Hybrid warfare
• Counter terrorism and extremism
• Defense planning
• Military transformation
• Security Sector Reform
• Defense Institution Building
• Crisis response and operation management
Gabriel Sjöblom-Fodor
Gabriel Sjöblom-Fodor is a researcher who specializes in the study of religious community work in the countering of violent extremism and extremist narratives, and how this work impacts national security. His focus is on deradicalization and prevention of violence using theological and psychological counseling, as well as the specific politico-religious and social roots of modern violent extremism. He has a background in journalism and in politics and has authored several reports and articles on these research topics. In 2015 he embarked on a research project that aimed to investigate how Muslim religious communities countered extremist narratives and recruitment to violent extremism. The focus lay in examining theological and counseling debates and methods, where the extremist narrative is deconstructed, have been used by religious actors, and continue to be used, in the Nordic context. This was done through interviewing religious leaders and actors who witnessed close-up the call to violent extremism during the rise and peak of the ISIS “Caliphate” and were able to witness first-hand these processes and engage with radicalized individuals, recruiters and FTFs. Gabriel has also consulted and assisted in several research projects on the topics of religious extremism, Salafism, radicalization and security strategies. He has also written several news articles on the topics as well as appeared in several publications. At ICSVE, Gabriel is working on the issues of EU repatriations, research into violent extremism and prevention and interventions to disrupt terrorist recruitment and delegitimize terrorist groups.