Raquel da Silva

Raquel is a Senior Manager at Listen & Learn Research where she is responsible for data analysis informed by different methodologies to shift thinking and inspire organisational change. She is a founding co-director of the Research Centre on Victimology and Qualitative Methodologies at Instituto Superior Politécnico Tundavala, in Angola. She co-founded ConnectFutures in 2013.

Raquel was awarded a PHD in 2016 (Institute for Applied social sciences) by the University of Birmingham in the areas of Psychology and Justice Psychology. She has co-authored publications on conflict transformation, analysing particularly the role of counter-terrorism and exploring whether an alternative framework of conflict transformation is possible, looking at current and future trends in which more conciliatory measures are utilised in changing relationships between “terrorists” and the state. She continues to deliver training on different modules both nationally and internationally.

9/11: The Al Qaeda attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington on 11th September 2001, which triggered President George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ and the  wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

7/7: The co-ordinated bomb attacks on London by four young British men in the name of Al Qaeda, on 7th July 2005, which killed 52 people.

Al Qaeda: Terrorist group founded in 1988 by Osama Bin Laden, which committed the 9/11 attacks.

Islamic State (Daesh/IS/ISIS/ISIL): Terrorist group formed after the fall of Saddam Hussain in Iraq and the civil war in Syria. It is the most prominent recruiter of Westerners to its mission to establish its own state.

CONTEST & the ‘4 Ps’: The British Government’s Counter Terrorism strategy initiated in 2006, revised in 2011, consisting of 4 strands: Prepare, Protect, Prevent and Pursue.

Prevent: Aiming to stop (prevent) individuals from supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists.