Areas of Expertise

Islamist extremism and terrorism
Preventing and countering Islamist extremism and terrorism
Islamist radicalization and extremism in Europe’s Chechen diaspora
Russia and counter-terrorism

Short Bio

Miriam Katharina Heß is an associate fellow in DGAP’s Center for Migration and an advisor on international cooperation and counter terrorism analysis at the German Council on Preventing Extremism (BAG RelEx).

From January 2022 to May 2023, Heß was a research fellow at DGAP, leading a project on Islamist radicalization and extremism in Europe’s Chechen diaspora. Previously, she worked on the project “Analysis of Trends and Developments in the Tertiary Prevention of Islamist Extremism” and for the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at DGAP.

She studied national and international administration and policy at the University of Potsdam and political science at the University of Hamburg. In her PhD project at the University of Leipzig, she is investigating the security rhetoric of terrorism in Germany in the context of securitization theory.