Thomas Koruth Samuel is at present the Regional Consultant for Terrorism Prevention with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). He is focusing on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) and his chief areas of interest lie in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia in particular, and the Southeast Asia region in general. He is also a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) working on issues relating to national unity, social cohesion and resilience. He was also commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2019 to research the subject of utilising education in countering violent extremism in Malaysia.
Prior to his consulting with the UN, he was the Director of the Digital Strategic Communications Division (DSCD) with the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT), which is under the purview of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Malaysia. He started off as a volunteer Health Officer for World Vision East Timor in 2003 and then moved to the Research and Publications division in SEARCCT in 2004. He served as the division’s director from 2010 to 2016 before assuming the position with the DSCD in SEARCCT. He has an honours degree in Biomedical Technology (2000) and a Masters degree in Strategic and Defence Studies (2005) from the University of Malaya, Malaysia. He is currently pursuing his PhD and his research is focused on the radicalisation pathways of young people.
His main areas of research include: (i) Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE); (ii) The role of education in P/CVE; (iii) The role of law enforcement and Civil Society Organisations (CSO) in P/CVE; (iv) Developing Early Warning Early Response (EWER) mechanisms in P/CVE; (v) Developing radicalisation indicators for P/CVE; (vi) Formulating strategic communications in P/CVE; (vii) Youth radicalisation; and (viii) Developing National Action Plans (NAP) in P/CVE.
Thomas is also very interested in mediation, conflict resolution and ‘spoiler management’ during times of conflict. He lectures nationally and internationally and has written numerous monographs, book chapters and articles on these subjects. In 2014, he was appointed as a Senior Fellow with the International Centre of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism (Hedayah Centre) based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). In 2018, he was also appointed as a member of the Commonwealth Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Cadre of Experts for a period of two years. He can be reached at thomas.samuel@un.org OR thomaskoruthsamuel@gmail.com
