The Institute for the Study of Violent Groups (ISVG) was officially formed in 2002 by Dr. Richard Ward, then the Dean of the College of Criminal Justice, at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. In 2008, Dr. Ward moved ISVG to the University of New Haven in West Haven, CT and began distributing its data collection efforts. ISVG now has open-source data collection activities at several locations in the United States working on a wide variety of projects. From the original staff of 7 data collectors, ISVG now has more than 90 personnel collecting and analyzing open source information on terrorism, extremism, and related transnational criminal activities.
2011 is a watershed year for ISVG with the launch of the Violent Extremism Knowledge Base (VKB) and the announcement of the Homeland Security Open Source Solution (HSOSS) with i2 Group, Inc. We are actively looking to expand our partnerships in data collection and analysis activities. If you have an interest in becoming a data collection or analysis partner, please contact us at [email protected].
ISVG’s core mission is aggregating, coding, and analyzing data. We’ve built the largest and most comprehensive database on violent extremism and transnational threats and maintain it with a dedicated data collection effort.
