pathway: Security, Conflict and Human Rights Alumni

Two-thirds of disclosures of sexual violence are made to friends, family and partners (informal support network), compared to only 9% disclosing to formal support services. Despite this, the vast majority of research pertaining to sexual violence is conducted within the context of formal disclosures, for instance reporting to the police. In contrast, my research is an exploration of the experiences of victim-survivors of sexual abuse, sexual assault and rape, focusing on the ways in which they were responded to by their informal support network and the impact of the aforementioned responses.

The objective of my research is to explore and explain subnational variation in violent collective action in Nigeria. Adopting an interdisciplinary theoretical framework drawn from across the social sciences and a mixed methods approach, I aim to investigate how local political factors interact with socioeconomic ones to shape the likelihood and nature of violence in space and time.

‘Female engagement’ has come to be understood as female soldiers on patrol, searching, intelligence gathering and winning the consent of the indigenous female population.  I will be exploring how it is differently understood through the formal and informal discourses of the military, diplomatic, development and humanitarian communities in the context of British counterinsurgency.  In addition to a contemporary study of the Afghanistan campaign, I will be including a historical perspective looking at the women’s outreach programmes of the Malaya campaign.

I am investigating what underpins assumptions that certain people warrant ‘our’ support, while the very existence of others, with ostensibly similar needs, is disregarded. There are countless ways in which resources could be distributed and people’s needs prioritised. If the deprivation of particular people is ignored, or appears inevitable, it suggests that alternatives may be obscured. I explore what is currently portrayed as ‘normal’, or legitimate, prioritisation of resources; how this impacts on the lives of disabled asylum seekers and of disabled Syrians selected under the Vulnerable Person’s Relocation Scheme; and how it could be otherwise.

Through ethnographic research in north London and a situational analysis of video footage of the riots, I aim to explain the occurrences of violence against police in 2011. The research responds to causal simplifications by the media/politicians which posit individual pathology rather than systemic dysfunction; a relative lack of in depth qualitative study of the social conditions and experiences which shaped the subjectivity to riot; and to a theory of violence, which proposes analysing the situational dynamics but also excludes background/social factors as causally irrelevant.

My research examines the everyday embodied experiences of asylum seekers in the U.K, with the aim of exploring the roles and functions of the body within the system. Through fieldwork conducted in the South West of England and analyses of asylum policy, I hope to discuss the various ways that the body is implicated in the asylum system, and the impacts that the system’s governance of the body has on asylum seekers’ everyday lives and self-understandings.

My research is looking at the dynamics of cross-sector collaboration in two case study networks – one in the UK (Bristol), the other in the Netherlands (Amsterdam). It is using participative and complexity-informed research methodologies to explore the values and power relations underpinning community-facing initiatives across a collaborative network. Central to the study is an exploration of how tensions and conflicts within the network are surfaced and managed, with what implications for sustained collaboration and the quality of service delivery. As public governance is increasingly devolved to the local level, the quality and inclusivity of cross-sector collaborative frameworks becomes highly relevant for core infrastructure and community support programmes.