Gender Based Violence: Prevention and Perpetrator Transformation

I am a researcher/practitioner focused on the prevention of, and response to, gender-based violence (GBV), with a particular interest in men’s violence, masculinity and transformative justice. I am interested in what it takes to achieve profound and sustainable transformation of people using abusive behaviours and in what kinds of interventions are most effective at preventing harm in the first place.

My work in this area came out of my doctoral research on anarchist/autonomous spaces which brought anti-oppressive pedagogy together with continental philosophy to propose an ethos of anti-oppressive self-formation as a practice of freedom. Seeing how oppressions resurface in anti-oppressive spaces, I became interested in how groups respond to those who do not want to live anti-oppressively. How for example, do we deal with sexual or intimate partner abuse in ways that are consistent with the emancipatory ethos of these spaces; how do we do justice to survivors; to perpetrators - and enable their transformation - and transform the systems which enable and minimise or legitimise such harms?

In search of an answers to this question of how to achieve perpetrator transformation, I began volunteering with FearFree on a Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programme (DAPP) and researching perpetrator interventions, as Senior Research Associate at University of Bristol School for Policy Studies, working on the evaluation of the Drive Pilot – a pioneering intervention with high risk perpetrators of domestic abuse. Now at Bristol Medical School’s Centre for Academic Primary Care, I am Senior Research Associate on Reprovide – a randomised controlled trial on the effectiveness of a Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programme (DAPP). Still interested in ethical-self formation, I remain excited by the micro-level process of change and resistance to change in these settings.

On prevention I work in schools, universities and workplaces designing and evaluating gender-transformative bystander intervention programmes to prevent sexual and domestic abuse and tackle harms that arise from intersecting axes of difference/inequality. The bystander approach enables people to skilfully challenge the ‘small’ comments, jokes and behaviours that create a conducive context for more severe harms. With Dr. Rachel Fenton at University of Exeter, I designed and delivered ‘Football Onside’ – a bespoke bystander intervention programme for Exeter City Football Club and Community Trust. Rachel and I are founder-directors of Kindling Transformative Interventions (Kindling-Interventions.com) which offers bespoke bystander programmes for violence prevention, equality and diversity in a range of settings. My research in this area explores what can be done, especially with men and boys, to question and rethink harmful attitudes around gender and masculinity and to cultivate more connecting relationships to self, others and the wider world.

Participatory Mapping & University/Community Co-production

In my roles as Knowledge Exchange Fellow on Know Your Bristol on the Move, and then as Project Coordinator and Co-investigator on Mapping LGBT+ Bristol I have developed interest in the possibilities, tensions  and ethics of university-‘community’ co-production. This strand of my work is about creating knowledge and tools (like digital maps, mobile apps and schools resources) with and for the communities whose stories they seek to tell. In particular I am interested in the extent to which, and by which specific practices, historically hierarchical/colonizing modes of knowledge production and practices of representation – such as maps and mapping – can be re-purposed to facilitate minimally hierarchical co-production across difference.

Facilitation/Group Work

For groups working towards social and ecological justice, I run and co-facilitate workshops on non-hierarchical decision-making, community accountability, conflict resolution, and personal/collective resilience. I am occasional facilitator at EcoDharma in the Catalan Pyrenees and BASE Social Centre in Bristol, England. This work draws on and brings together anti-oppressive pedagogy, nature connection work’, secular mindfulness practices and  ‘The Work That Reconnects’.