Thorsten Koch

Thorsten Koch (* 1977) is a German journalist, social science researcher, and NGO manager. As a writer, Koch has made a career in the fields of regional, IT, financial, and political reporting. He served as a Senior Expert on Mauritania for Amnesty International from 2001 bis 2013. Since 2017, he has made a mark in the field of soft counter-extremism. On a daily basis, Koch has been distributing selected, open-access texts about counter-extremism and against hate to a network of now more than 6,000 followers of his LinkedIn profile, thus covering questions of principle and proposing remedies against radicalization.
==Education==
Koch holds an MA in Mass Communications (Leicester), with a mixed-method dissertation on Mauritanian journalist networks. He completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Islamic Studies (Wales TSD) as well as advanced studies in Migration and Society (JGU Mainz), concluding the latter with the widely spread final paper 
==Early Non-Profit Work==
Koch began leading office work for human rights organizations in 1997, including the UN ECOSOC-accredited European Chapter of the Mauritanian CDHRM and the discussion list ForumDiaspora. Since then, he has taken executive roles for several non-profits. He was in charge of Mauritania, from 2001 to 2013, for the German Section of the human rights organization Amnesty International, coordinating campaigns in Germany and providing research input to the International Secretariat.
==Later Work==
From June 2020 until May 2023, Koch was named Specialist Consultant for the Countering Violent Extremism Unit of The Commonwealth Secretariat, after being co-opted, from January 2020 until December 2021, as a Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation Consultant with the Brussels-based NGO Search for Common Ground. 
Koch is the founder of both the non-profit Policyinstitute.net, which saw the light in 2017, and the news service de-news.net, established in 2023. Policyinstitute.net maintains four websites. Besides counter-terrorism.org, these are Preventhate.org (with texts and tools to avert online hate speech), think-tank-talk.org (incorporating analytical pieces), and sahara-sahel.org (treating capacity building concerning the Sahel). de-news.net, on the other hand, consists of the English-language news projects GermanPolicy.com and GermanCorrespondent.com. More recently, Koch established the site journal-allemand.com, which conveys information about Germany in French.
==Journalism==
Having conducted IT analyses and management tasks for top sources such as ZDNet.de, for which he managed two online channels (including shareware), Koch got to edit seven newsletters on finance and the economy on behalf of Dow Jones News e.a. In the 1990s, a number of his articles contributed to changing the legal situation in Germany with regard to the employment of asylum seekers towards more independent income generation. His work made it to the newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, and Die Zeit. For more than half a decade, Koch oversaw the first daily online newsletter on Mauritania, Mauritanie @CTU, which carried open-access content on the Northwest African nation.
==Monographs Against Radicalization==
Koch has written a monograph about cultural racism in which he elaborates on two right-wing populist groups representing radical, but not extremist, positions up until the year 2017. In his academic writings, he argues that the majority of British Muslims support state institutions as well as the national prevention program, and that attacks can massively damage the reputation of Islam. He considers secular jurisprudence in Muslim societies to be possible and presents a number of modernist, Islamic models of thought. 
Coversely, Koch has published a short reference work on German idiomatic expressions. Since October 2019, Koch works as a Reviewer for the journal Politikon, issued by the International Association for Political Science Students (IAPSS).
==Publications (selection)==
555 Expressions in German for Wiseguys. KDP, 2019, retrieved November 8, 2023. 
Ordained Shari'ah Principles v. Man-Made Code. UWTSD, 2017, retrieved November 8, 2023. 
Ungerecht und unnütz. Die Zeit, 1999, retrieved November 8, 2023.
==Memberships (selection)==
The Radicalization, Rehabilitation, Reintegration, and Recidivism Network (since Aug 2023). 
HOPE RAD Network (since March 2023). 
CDU Deutschlands (since July 2020). 
Experten- und Kompetenzpool CDU Deutschlands (since March 2022). 
German Middle East Studies Association (since June 2020). 
Counter Extremism Hub (since May 2020). 
Lampeter Society (since November 2018).
==Websites==
thorstenkoch.com
Policyinstitute.net
de-news.net
counter-terrorism.org
Preventhate.org
think-tank-talk.org
sahara-sahel.org
GermanPolicy.com
germancorrespondent.com
journal-allemand.com
Page at Amazon.com
Page at ResearchGate.net
Page at Academia.edu
Page at Google Scholar
Category:1977 births
Category:German journalists
Category:Social research
Category:Writers