Foundations for an evidence-based extremism resilience framework 

This project will investigate community-level extremism risk in the UK, focusing on harmful extremism and democratic erosion. 

Why is this important?

The UK lacks a comprehensive framework to monitor community-level extremism risk. Current measures, such as social cohesion indices, fail to integrate indicators of extremist activity, structural vulnerabilities, and diminishing democratic resilience. Prevent referrals in 2023-24 showed 36% involved vulnerability without ideological risk, highlighting the rise of nihilistic extremism.  

What does it involve?

The research team aim to address these gaps by developing an integrated framework to strengthen community resilience and inform upstream prevention strategies. The following key research questions will be answered: 

• What are the key indicators and factors for assessing community-level extremism risk, including both indicators of current extremist activity and structural factors affecting vulnerability and resilience? 

• How can these indicators/factors be defined in a conceptually robust and policy-relevant manner, based on existing literature and expert insight? 

• Which indicators could meaningfully measure extremism risk? 

• What data currently exist to operationalise these indicators, and how complete, reliable, and comparable are they (across the UK)? 

• Where are the critical gaps in available evidence, and what data would be required to address them? 

• How can identified indicators be organised into a coherent framework? 

• What further research and methodological development would be required to produce a fully operational extremism risk assessment framework? 

The research will start with a rapid evidence review to identify factors contributing to permissive environments for extremism. Semi-structured interviews with experts and practitioners will capture operational realities. Datasets will be audited to assess data availability and identify gaps.  In addition to developing, validating, and refining the community-level risk framework a roadmap for implementation will be developed.

How will it make a difference?

Findings will be shared with stakeholders, including central government, local authorities, and police forces, and civil society. Briefings tailored to different audience will promote update and integration into existing systems.