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 Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. Since April 2024, she works as an expert on religiously motivated extremism at the National Committee on Religiously Motivated Extremism (BAG RelEx) e.V.

From January 2022 to May 2023, Heß was a research fellow at DGAP, working on 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 Russia and France in the context of securitization theory.