Current Affairs

On Wednesday 06 March 2024, The SHaME Project and Birkbeck's Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health hosted an online seminar on public engagement with lived experience research with Zara Asif and Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh, chaired by Dr Sarah Marks.

How can historians meaningfully and ethically research past experiences of sexual violence? History Workshop Online's Dr Marybeth Hamilton and SHaME's Dr Ruth Beecher and Dr Rhian Keyse discuss the often surprising dynamics of the histories they’ve uncovered – and the strategies and supports they’ve developed for navigating their own emotions in conducting such emotionally challenging research.

What is the history of activism against sexual violence? History Workshop Online's Marybeth Hamilton and SHaME's Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh, Dr George Severs, and Allison McKibban complicate the dominant histories, strategies, narratives, and stigmas associated with sexual violence.

Child marriage is often conceived of as embedded in the past, but there is little attention to its historical context. Rhian Keyse explores how this obscures the shifting dynamics and social meanings of such practices.

When does the call for ‘speaking out’ against sexual violence begin to silence? Reflecting on the #MeToo moment, Allison McKibban argues mainstream Western movements against sexual violence are often insidiously laced with colonial violence. She calls on activists and researchers to embrace a self-reflective and decolonial listening to create a truly transformative movement against sexual violence.

Is the family a place of safety or a trap? SHaME Director Dr Ruth Beecher explores the institution of the family and the (lack of) recognition of child sexual abuse within it.

Dr George Severs argues that the history of male victims of rape and sexual violence should make us all alert to the ways in which gender norms silence male experiences of abuse, and prompt us to hear hear male survivors who are so often both silent and silenced.

Can medical institutions participate in colonial violence? SHaME's Allison McKibban argues the involuntary sterilization of tens of thousands of Native American women in the 1970s must be rehistoricised as part of the U.S. government’s broader campaign of genocide.

SHaME Associate Fellow Dr Stephanie Wright explores how society approaches the sexual desires of those with disabilities. She establishes how the historical lack of acknowledgement of vulnerable people's sexual autonomy can result in an increased possibility of harm. 

SHaME Public Engagement Coordinators Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh and Allison McKibban introduce (Un)Silenced, a series in collaboration with History Workshop Online, which explores how sexual violence relates to various societal institutions.

How has sexual violence been produced through different institutional cultures of harm? And what strategies have survivors used to counter silence, shame, and stigma? The SHaME team explores various forms of institutional sexual violence in a series originally published with History Workshop Online in 2022.

On World AIDS Day (December 1st), Dr George Severs reflects on some of the early HIV responses of forensic medics working with rape survivors.

Curator Fiona Rogers discusses the work of artist Laia Abril in the context of how gendered violence and rape appear in the canon and spaces of art history. An exhibition of Abril's work is on display at the Copeland Gallery from 10-27th November 2022.

Amongst the many risks and uncertainties brought on by an act of sexual violence is the threat of sexually transmitted infection. What are the barriers to such post-rape health care and advice? In this blog, SHaME Postdoctoral Fellow Dr George Severs reflects on a policy roundtable which considered these questions in relation to HIV.

As Lexie Bean wrote in 2018, ‘nothing is heavier than silence’. The stories we tell about experiences of sexual violence in therapeutic spaces are complex, dynamic, evolving. They are spoken in a different language to that compelled by the law, which exercises a register of fact-finding chronology and rationality. They are fundamentally incompatible, and whether we resolve that by new legislation restricting access to therapeutic notes, or through abandoning investment in carceral solutions altogether, is up to us.

SHaME Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Rhian Keyse discusses the recent U.S. Supreme Court leaked draft opinion, its ahistorical logic, and its implications for abortion rights in the U.S.

SHaME Public Engagement Coordinators Dr Rhea Sookdeosingh and Allison McKibban introduce (Un)Silenced, a series in collaboration with History Workshop Online, which explores how sexual violence relates to various societal institutions.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: A Lost Opportunity By Ruth Beecher and Joanna Bourke   The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), whose...