Violence against women – particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence – “is a major public and clinical health problem and a violation of women’s human rights” (World Health Organization). One in three women across the planet experiences this type of violence. Its ripples also affect many others, including family and community members of perpetrators and victim-survivors, practitioners in support services, and all the institutions and workplaces in which it occurs such as the law, education, health, politics and entertainment industries. As well as having significant, lasting effects on their health and well-being, it also prevents women playing an equal part in society and restricts their freedom. We are in the midst of unprecedented public and political attention to forms of gendered violence such as intimate partner violence, coercive control, sexual abuse, and digital gendered violations. The time is ripe for developing research-based innovations that improve responses and prevent it from happening.
Our researchers fuse academic and practice-based disciplines and work with practitioners and policy-makers to better understand the complexities of these forms of violence and to design feasible, effective solutions to gendered violence and abuse that have meaningful impacts. We have particular strengths in researching an emerging form of gendered violence - digital gendered violations - and a ‘wicked’ problem - domestic abuse. We recognise that no single discipline has the answers to the complex problems of gendered violence and abuse and so develop inter-disciplinary collaborations to analyse and address the social, political, and cultural structures and technological systems that enable and perpetuate GVA.
We are a diverse group of around 65 academics at Northumbria University from across a wide range of disciplines. We have varied backgrounds in academic research, professional practice, policy-making and activism. Many of us are involved in volunteering and are on Boards of organisations in the violence against women sector. We devise effective collaborations with a range of partners to find meaningful solutions to gendered violence and abuse. This includes involving victim-survivors as co-producers of research outputs and centring lived experience as a priority.
To join our Gendered Violence and Abuse IDRT mailing list, please email researchsupport@northumbria.ac.uk
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