Blog

Dr George Severs' work explores the history of male survivors of rape and sexual violence. His research project also investigates the ways in which the HIV/AIDS epidemic impacted the medical and psychiatric aftercare available to survivors of rape and sexual assault.

Allison McKibban's project explores how U.S. federal policy utilizes colonial discourses to (re)produce sexual violence against Native American women. Focusing on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), her project elucidates the ways in which indigenous women are represented to be ‘problems’ in the legislation, the underlying logics and genealogies, the silences and contestations, and their lived and discursive effects.

Dr Rhian Keyse's project explores the evolution of (post)colonial and international medico-legal responses to rape and sexual violence in Anglophone Africa, c.1920-1985, with particular focuses on Kenya and Ghana. It seeks to understand how international, colonial, and postcolonial legal, medical, and psychiatric structures have impacted on survivors of sexual violence; to recover the experiences of complainants as they navigated medical and legal structures, as well as the role of medical personnel in identifying and prosecuting sexual violence; and to examine how shifting ideas of governance, development, anti-colonialism and rights influenced debates and responses to sexual violence on African continent.

Adeline Moussion's PhD focuses on the socio-cultural conditions in which sexual violence is qualified as ‘unbearable’. She will be examining psycho-medical care and social support mechanisms in feminist care institutions dedicated to supporting women victims of violence.

Dr Louise Hide's project returns to the hospital inquiry documentation of the 1970s to gain a deeper understanding of the values, belief systems and practices that fostered a culture of neglect and abuse in some wards and institutions.

Dr Stephanie Wright's project explores the role of police surgeons and forensic psychiatrists in sexual violence court cases under the Francoist regime. More specifically, the project constitutes a historical study of the legal term ‘dishonest abuses’, which referred to a broad spectrum of criminalised sexual acts, from rape and child abuse to homosexuality.

Emma Yapp's PhD explores how psychiatric evidence about survivors of sexual violence is admitted into court proceedings in England and Wales. She will be examining both the context in which these practices are constructed and conducted, and exploring appropriate practice.

Medicine and psychiatry have been influential in the understanding and experience of sexual violence. Professor Joanna Bourke's project explores broad trends from perspectives that are both global and local (in UK, US, Australia, and New Zealand).

Rhea Sookdeosingh's role is to develop a public engagement strategy and programme for the project. She will be working with the team’s researchers to enhance their engaged research practices and plan engagement activities.

In late nineteenth-century California sexual violence revealed dynamics of American expansion on the western frontier. Caitlin Cunningham's PhD explores how it was understood and responded to at various social and institutional levels.

Through archival research and oral histories, Dr Ruth Beecher seeks to gain insight into the ways community-based nurses, doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists in Britain have responded to the possibility that a child has been sexually abused by a family member. 1970s-2000s