Alexander Ritzmann leads the work of CEP Berlin on violent far-right extremist or terrorist (transnational) networks, offline and online. He also focusses on extremist/terrorist content online and internet regulation, e.g., the German NetzDG and EU Digital Services Act.

Alexander has been working on the promotion of liberal democracy and the prevention of violent extremism for more than 20 years now. He has testified before the German Bundestag, the European Parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives on these matters.

Alexander is also advising the European Commission’s  Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN), where he particularly focuses on extremist ideologies, narratives and strategic communications. From 2016 to 2020, Alexander was a member of the RAN Steering Committee and co-chair of its Communication and Narratives (C&N) Working Group. In this capacity, he co-developed the GAMMMA+ model for effective alternative and counter narratives, which serves as a tool-kit for practitioners all over the EU and beyond.

From 2018 until the end of the project in 2021, he co-developed and facilitated the International Forum for Expert Exchange on Countering Islamist Extremism (InFoEx) at the German Council of Foreign Relations (DGAP). From 2010 to 2012 and from 2017 to 2020, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS) in Potsdam, Germany. There, Alexander published research on the internal structures of Hezbollah and Al Qaeda and he directed a P/CVE project, funded by the German federal government, that focused on the role of values in the integration process of refugees in Germany (2017-2020).

Between 2007 to 2017, Alexander worked with the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, Belgium, in different capacities and with a break between breaks in between. From September 2012 – December 2015, he was based in Cairo, Egypt, where he worked as Senior Advisor MENA Region and Project Manager for GIZ, the German Development Cooperation. He has also lived and worked in Berlin, Brussels, Beirut, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Washington D.C. In 2007 he was a DAAD-Fellow at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, DC.