This seminar is part of the School for Policy Studies - International Seminar Series 2021-2022

Access to a Life Free from Violence will focus on strategies to ensure safety and a life without fear of violence for different groups. This not only relates to interpersonal violence, violence against children by adults, but also structural violence, state violence, acts of terrorism and conflict etc.

Dr Jade Levell: The Other Side of the Story: Perpetrators in Change
Dr Victoria Canning: Torture and Torturous Violence: Transcending Definional Boundaries of Torture
Prof Gyanmudra: Umbrella Organisations for Women Affected by Violence with Special Reference to the State of Telangana, India

Register for this event here

---

The Other Side of the Story: Perpetrators in Change

This presentation will report on findings from an ongoing European Commission funded study into non-criminal justice interventions for domestic violence and abuse (DVA) perpetrators. The project is a partnership between a range of agencies in the UK, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and Romania. The work has involved fieldwork in all partner countries with victims, perpetrators, and professionals working in the DVA field. In this talk I will share some of the most compelling findings we are currently working on, as well as consider the practical issues with carrying out international research on violence.

Dr Jade Levell, Lecturer in Criminology and Gender Violence:
Jade Levell is Lecturer in Criminology and Gender Violence in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the relationship between masculinities, violence, and vulnerability. She is a board member for ‘Working with Perpetrators Europe (WWPEN) and is on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Gender Based Violence. Prior to her research career Jade worked for a decade in charities that work to end gender-based violence. 

Torture and Torturous Violence: Transcending Definional Boundaries of Torture

There is growing recognition that torture, as defined in domestic and international laws, can be a narrow scope within which we can come to recognise and understand forms of violence which echo or mirror such abuses, but that are not technically definable as torture. By concretely conceptualising torturous violence, and drawing from interviews with psychologists and psychotraumatologists, and oral histories with women seeking asylum, this presentation seeks to explore the multifaceted forms of violence which may amount to torture in terms of pain infliction and impact, but that are often overlooked as such when these do not meet internationally accepted definitions of torture.  

Dr Victoria Canning, Senior lecturer in Criminology:
Victoria Canning is senior lecturer in Criminology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. She is currently co-coordinator of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, associate director in Border Criminologies at Oxford University, and Trustee of Statewatch. She researches violence, harm and torture, and has worked for more than a decade on migrant rights and women’s rights. She is co-creator of the Right to Remain Asylum Navigation Board (with Lisa Matthews), and her first monograph Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System won the 2018 British Society of Criminology book prize.  

Umbrella Organisations for Women Affected by Violence with Special Reference to the State of Telangana, India

Gender-Based Violence (GBV), is the issue attached with global and India as well, there are so many aspects entrusted for Violence. It has now been more than five years since Sakhi One Stop Centres were set up across the state of India to address the issue of gender-based violence (GBV) through the providing of integrated services to women and violence. This study has focused on the experiences of Telangana State Sakhi One Stop Centre. It has analysed early experiences and present scenarios of the States related to the Sakhi one-stop centre in India.

Prof Gyanmudra, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India:
Prof Gyanmudra is currently working as Professor & Chairperson in School of Gender Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad Campus, India. Her interested areas of specialization are in Organizational Behaviour; Gender issues and Community Health; Rural Development; Training, Research and Participatory Methods; Psychometric Techniques Involving Personality Assessment, Recruitment etc. She has around 70 Publications and had organised around 300 national & international training programmes. She was part of Human Capital Management Programme by Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines. She is a member of International Advisory Council of Asia-Pacific Consortium of Researchers and Educators, Inc. 

School for Policy Studies - International Seminar Series 2021-2022

Each seminar within the series will illuminate the work of two colleagues within SPS alongside an overseas-based academic on a specific sub-theme relating to our access to social justice focus. 

The next event in the series will be: Access to Social and Cultural Rights – 25 May 2022, 12-2pm

This seminar will focus on children’s, young people and family’s access to social and cultural rights including to family life, cultural activities, play and inclusion into a national community.

Professor Zsuzsa Millei, University of Tampere, Finland - Title: Reflections on methodological nationalism in migration research concerning children 

Professor Debbie Watson, Professor of Child and Family Welfare in the School for Policy Studies - Title: VR Dance: young people at risk of criminalisation accessing cultural rights

Dr Jon Symonds, Senior Lecturer in Social Work with Children and Families in the School for Policy Studies - Title: Negotiating rights to family life when parents separate 

---