Sofia Koller is a Senior Research Analyst at CEP in Berlin, where her research focus lies on foreign (terrorist) fighters as well as disengagement from violent Islamist extremism in Europe, specifically in Germany and France. Sofia has for example been analyzing the prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration of Islamic State returnees from Syria and Iraq, including as part of a research project on female returnees with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague.

Sofia has also been contributing to the European Commission’s  Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) as an expert for RAN Policy Support and RAN Practitioners.

From 2018 to 2021, Sofia was a research fellow for counter terrorism and the prevention of extremism at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). At DGAP, she was project leader of the International Forum for Expert Exchange on Countering Islamist Extremism (InFoEx), a project in cooperation with the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) and funded by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building, and Community (BMI) within the framework of the National Prevention Program against Islamist Extremism (NPP). Previously, she worked as a project coordinator and consultant in Lebanon and France.

Sofia studied international relations and management at the University of Applied Sciences Regensburg and the German-Jordanian University in Amman and holds a Master’s degree in International Conflict Studies from the War Studies Department at King's College London. In her thesis, she analyzed the state of emergency after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in France.

Photo: ©DGAP-Zsófia Pölöske