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The paper argues that education is relevant for both domestic and international reasons and without an incorporation of the international within the national it is not possible to understand education's changes and transformations in post-conflict and conflict-affected contexts. The paper aims to connect the local to the global by investigating their dynamic interaction through the peculiar lenses of international assistance to education reform in post-conflict Kosovo. It asks two questions: (1) how do global agendas of peace and security affect education reforms in conflict-affected contexts? and (2) how does education reform in conflict-affected contexts interacts with and is related to broader, international dynamics, processes, and actors? More specifically, the paper analyses the role of international actors in traditionally national sectors and the multi-layered, hybrid governance of education reform within a broader statebuilding, peacebuilding, and stabilization perspective. The analysis is divided into two empirical instances: (i) education for liberal multicultural peace (1999–2013) and (ii) education against violent extremism and radicalization (2014–2019). The paper sheds light on the globalization and securitization of education as well as the changing forms and practice of statehood and sovereignty in times of post-war-reconstruction and fragility. A threat-containment and security-based logic has dictated priorities and determined choices in education reform and content.

This article aims at reviewing and mapping the actors and sites involved in knowledge production on radicalisation, focusing on the EU context. We did so by collecting information on EU-funded research projects, which cover subjects of radicalisation and violent extremism, and are sponsored through either the Seventh Framework Programme or Horizon 2020; and analysing them from the point of view of the actors involved in the project implementation. Complementarily, we have focused on the actors involved in the design of the calls for project proposals and the strategic documents framing and embedding them. By premising on the assumption that experts' knowledge and scientific knowledge are sources of leverage and contention in security-related policy areas, we intend to have a well-rounded grasp of the actors that are involved in the production and utilisation of such knowledge in policy-making, their organisation, their gate-keeping capacity and the instruments at their disposal.

Scholarly attention is emerging on the globalisation and proliferation of initiatives and measures in the fields of counter-radicalisation and countering violent extremism (Hayes and Kundnani 2018). A multitude of international actors endeavour to provide security norms and governance standards in that respect, including international and regional organisations, donor communities, transnational/global networks as well as non-governmental actors, informal coalitions, platforms and think tanks. This article aims at mapping and analysing how such many-sided assemblages function along European peripheries, more specifically, in two under-studied countries, Kosovo and Georgia, where several international actors are involved in projects to prevent and counter radicalisation and violent extremism. The study will contrast and compare externally driven efforts of countering violent extremism and radicalisation, and trace the interests and agendas pursued by different international actors operating in the Western Balkans and the South Caucasus. Moreover, it will analyse how the concepts of radicalisation and extremism and measures to counter them have been specifically "localised" in Kosovo and Georgia, as well as grounded and embedded in their specific socio-political contexts and normative frameworks.