Dr Vicky Canning
BA (hons), PhD, PGCE
Expertise
Vicky has spent over a decade working on the rights of women seeking asylum. She is interested in support for survivors of sexual violence and torture across NGOs and migrant rights organisations, and in mitigating border harms.
Current positions
Senior Lecturer
School for Policy Studies
Contact
Media contact
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Biography
Victoria has worked in the women’s rights sector since 2006. Her current project (2020-2022, British Academy) is entitled 'Unsilencing Sexualised Torture' and focuses on addressing support for women survivors of this form of violence (with the Danish Institute Against Torture). She recently led an ESRC Future Research Leader Project (2016-2018) which explored socially harmful practices in asylum processes in Britain, Denmark and Sweden.
Vicky is co-coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control; associate director at Oxford University's Border Criminologies, as well as with their partner institution Border Observatory in Australia; and trustee at Statewatch EU. She is consultant editor of Justice, Power and Resistance journal, and on the editorial boards of Criminology and Criminal Justice; Incarceration; and Current Issues in Criminal Justice. She has been visiting scholar at Lund University (Sweden) and Monash University (Australia).
She acted as consultant on the BAFTA award winning BBC series Exodus: Our Journey to Europe, and has published extensively on women’s rights, with one book - Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System - winning the British Society of Criminology Book Prize in 2018. She is co-producer of the ‘Right to Remain Asylum Rights Navigation Board’ with Lisa Matthews (R2R) which has been implemented across 130 organisations across the UK, Europe and Hong Kong to enable migrants applying for asylum to navigate the complex labyrinth of asylum laws and policy.
Research interests
Victoria has worked in the women’s rights sector since 2006. Her current project (2020-2022, British Academy) is entitled 'Unsilencing Sexualised Torture' and focuses on addressing support for women survivors of this form of violence (with the Danish Institute Against Torture). She recently led an ESRC Future Research Leader Project (2016-2018) which explored socially harmful practices in asylum processes in Britain, Denmark and Sweden.
Vicky is co-coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control; associate director at Oxford University's Border Criminologies, specialising in grassroots advocacy and international impact, as well as with our partner institution the Border Observatory in Australia; and trustee at Statewatch EU. She is also consultant editor of Justice, Power and Resistance journal, and on the editorial boards of Criminology and Criminal Justice; Incarceration and Current Issues in Criminal Justice, has been visiting scholar at Lund University (Sweden) and Monash University (Australia).
Having acted as consultant on the BAFTA award winning BBC series Exodus: Our Journey to Europe, she has also published extensively on women’s rights across multiple international forums, with one book - Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System - winning the British Society of Criminology Book Prize in 2018. She is co-producer of the ‘Right to Remain Asylum Rights Navigation Board’ with Lisa Matthews (R2R) which has been implemented across 130 organisations across the UK, Europe and Hong Kong to enable migrants applying for asylum to navigate the complex labyrinth of asylum laws and policy.
Vicky’s PhD (2008-2011, LJMU) investigated barriers to support for women seeking asylum in the UK who have been subjected to sexual violence during conflict and civil unrest. In 2013 I was awarded an Early Career Research grant from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) to undertake research with The Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY) in Copenhagen, investigating psychosocial responses to women survivors of conflict. She continues this partnership today.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Unsilencing Sexualised Torture
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
31/08/2020 to 30/04/2022
Gendered Experiences of Social Harm in Asylum: Exploring State Responses to Persecuted Women in Britain, Denmark and Sweden
Principal Investigator
Description
This research thus aims to:
1. Address the current shortfalls and gaps in knowledge by expanding empirically generated data pertaining to the micro-level socially harmful impacts resulting from gendered asylum policy…Managing organisational unit
School for Policy StudiesDates
01/10/2016 to 01/11/2018
Publications
Recent publications
08/02/2021The Confinement Continuum:
Sensory Penalties
Managing Expectations
Social Sciences
From Social Harm to Zemiology
From Social Harm to Zemiology
Bureaucratised Banality:
Refugees and the Violence of European Welfare Bureaucracies
Sensing and Unease in Immigration Detention: An Abolitionists Perspective
Researching Coercive Confinement
Teaching
Victoria has worked in four universities specialising in developing and implementing modules related to Social Harm, Gendered Violence, Social and Criminal Justice, and Violence, Conflict and Forced Migration.
At the University of Bristol, she leads SPOL20025 Globlalisation, Crime, Harm and Justice, and SPOL30066 Violence, Conflict and Forced Migration.
Vicky supervises PhDs related to these areas at Bristol and Linköping University, Sweden, and is external examiner at the University of Lincoln.