Inauguration of the Academy on Behavioural Insight to Prevent and Counter Violent Extremism
The Behavioural Insights Academy (BI Academy) inaugurated in Doha by the International Hub on Behavioural Insights of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT BI Hub), in partnership with Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) with a 5-day course starting 8 May 2023.
The new BI Hub’s flagship academy programme is the first of its kind to feature capacity-building in behavioural insights tailored for the international community of practice in preventing and countering violent extremism (PCVE). PCVE practitioners, and representatives from civil society, governmental institutions, and United Nations entities will gather in Doha for the inaugural training course.
The UNOCT BI Hub is partnering with HBKU, a research and graduate studies university that acts as a catalyst for positive transformation in Qatar while having a global impact. Its colleges include the College of Public Policy (CPP), which undertakes cutting edge research on policy challenges facing the country, region, and world. In doing so, the CPP acts as a bridge and hub for innovative policy solutions across a range of issues.
During the 5-day inaugural course, led by renowned experts, participants learned how to lead their organizations in adopting behavioural insights at the core of their programmatic work. Beyond skill-building, the UNOCT BI Academy programme emphasizes the need for a “learning-by-doing” approach, allowing participants to develop their unique, creative and science-based solutions to PCVE challenges within their respective areas of expertise and professional environments.
The first two days of in-depth practice featured coaching, mentorship, and group exercises in three key BI areas: Mental Health, Social Psychology and Behavioural Economics. The following two days were dedicated to behavioural design with participants developing their own BI intervention “test project” and assessing the efficiency of its future implementation. Trainees also gained an understanding of insights from the existing empirical literature in the context of countering-terrorism and preventing violent extremism. These include identity formation and narrative construction, as well as ingroup-outgroup psychology, social norms in radical groups, situational and contextual influences on decision making, and cognitive scarcity, among others.
The BI Academy programme is comprised of 3 modules. The “Academic Phase” lays the foundation for the programme through its comprehensive 5-day curriculum. It is followed by a “support phase” during which experts will provide guidance and mentorship to participants in developing behavioural solutions to PCVE-related challenges. In the concluding “launch phase”, participants will be able to leverage their respective projects to further institutionalise behavioural capacity within their professional context and in their respective fields of work.
