Activism Against Sexual Violence: A Podcast from Marybeth Hamilton with Allison McKibban, George Severs, and Rhea Sookdeosingh — (Un)Silenced: Institutional Sexual Violence – Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters (SHaME)

Activism Against Sexual Violence: A Podcast from Dr Marybeth Hamilton with Allison McKibban, Dr George Severs, and Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh

This article was originally published on History Workshop Online.

This is a contribution for the (Un)Silenced: Institutional Sexual Violence feature, which explores how sexual violence relates to various societal institutions. The series provides a historical understanding of the ways in which sexual violence is produced through different institutional cultures of harm.

What is the history of activism against sexual violence? What kinds of strategies have survivors employed to combat it and to counter the stigma that has too often surrounded it? What kinds of narratives of resistance and protest have historically been given priority – and what voices have been left out? Today’s guests are committed to examining those questions through their involvement with an interdisciplinary research project called SHAME – an acronym for Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters – which explores the links between sexual violence, medicine, and psychiatry.

Allison McKibban is an ESRC-funded doctoral student and Public Engagement Lead (maternity cover) for The SHaME Project. Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, law, history, and decolonising studies, and her current project explores how U.S. federal policy utilises colonial discourse to (re)produce sexual violence against Native American women. Allison has previously worked as a Public Engagement Coordinator for multiple UKRI and university projects. She is particularly interested in issues of ethics and safeguarding in public engagement projects, and is a steering group member for the Challenging Research Network. She tweets as @AllisonMckibban.

Dr George Seversis Postdoctoral Researcher on the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project ‘Race and Sexual and Reproductive Health Charities in postwar Britain’ (PI Dr Caroline Rusterholz). Before joining the Graduate Institute, Dr Severs was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Wellcome-funded Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters (SHaME) project at Birkbeck, University of London. There, he researched the history of male survivors of sexual violence in the UK, as well as the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on forensic and genitourinary medics working with survivors of sexual violence. His first book, based on his PhD thesis and under contract with Bloomsbury Academic, is a history of HIV/AIDS activism in England during the 1980s and 1990s. Dr Severs is an oral historian, serving as Public History Editor on the journal Oral History and as the Secretary of the Oral History Society’s LGBTQ special interest group.

Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh is the Public Engagement Lead for The SHaME Project at Birkbeck, University of London. She is an experienced public engagement practitioner and has previously worked in capacity-building roles at Birkbeck and the University of Oxford. Rhea works to develop and steward partnerships that drive humanities-led research and innovation, and she has an overarching interest in showcasing the social and civic value of arts and humanities research and practice. She is also an historian with interests in the intellectual, social and cultural history of medicine. Her first monograph on the history of anorexia nervosa in nineteenth-century Britain is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Rhea is currently the co-chair of Birkbeck’s staff diversity network REACH (Race, Ethnicity & Cultural Heritage), which works to support and amplify the voices of underrepresented ethnically diverse staff across the University.

Activism Against Sexual Violence: A Podcast from Marybeth Hamilton with Allison McKibban, George Severs, and Rhea Sookdeosingh — (Un)Silenced: Institutional Sexual Violence

Activism Against Sexual Violence: A Podcast from Dr Marybeth Hamilton with Allison McKibban, Dr George Severs, and Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh

An Evening Celebrating Professor Joanna Bourke

Historicising the Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Global Perspectives - Special Issue: Women’s History Review

Bureaucracy, Emotion and Sexual Violence: A Podcast from Marybeth Hamilton with Rhian Keyse and Ruth Beecher — (Un)Silenced: Institutional Sexual Violence