Diversifying practice and policy responses to domestic violence and abuse amidst a shifting gender landscape

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The proposed activities during this fellowship aim to maximise the social and academic impact of my doctoral research, which seeks to radically reconceptualise the dominant practice and policy paradigms governing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) intervention and prevention, in order to improve outcomes for victim-survivors of DVA. Normative understandings and responses to DVA place disproportionate responsibility on victim-survivors (usually women), for addressing and reducing DVA and men's violence towards women. This occurs at various scales, including within social care settings. My survivor-led research uses participatory methods, to elaborate a triangulated analysis of data from women victim-survivors, women DVA practitioners, and men involved in efforts to address men's violence using an intersectional, inclusive-feminist framework. My research interrogates the dominant discourses of gender and gender relations constituted in and by DVA, so that outcomes for victim-survivors of DVA may be improved through better prevention and intervention. The study theorises a reworking of the dominant DVA prevention, victimhood, and perpetration discourses governing policy, practice, and service spaces. In this, it exposes the ubiquity of notions of 'authentic' victimhood, and argues instead for the recognition of the diversity and complexity of the full range of victim-survivor experience, foregrounding victim-survivor resistance to violence and the multiple ways in which the dominant DVA narrative occludes many victim-survivors' experience, particularly those experiencing inequalities or living more marginal lives (including Black African, Caribbean, Asian and other minoritised women, trans, lesbian, queer and bi women, women involved in sex-work, women experiencing poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage, and non-binary people).The fellowship will provide a platform to disseminate the learning from my research, which makes significant contributions to the current public debates regarding men's violence towards women and the urgent need to reconceptualise the issue of DVA as one for which there is a collective social responsibility to address. The research also intervenes in the academic debates regarding the role of inequalities in the lives of victim-survivors and makes substantive and methodological contributions to existing scholarship on the gendered, classed and racialised impacts of austerity. Finally, it contributes to a growing body of literature on social movement theorisations of men's anti-violence against women (VAW) engagement, substantiating the instrumental value of men's participation in efforts to stop men's violence. As such, it offers a compelling feminist rationale for incorporating men in VAW and DVA prevention, not only to reduce prevalence rates but to improve outcomes for victim-survivors, particularly when involved in children's social care proceedings. In this, men are framed as equally responsible subjects for the eradication of violence and abuse against women, and other minoritised groups. This constitutes a crucial component in efforts to challenge victim-blaming narratives, as well as to hold perpetrators of abuse to account, thereby expanding the field of research centred on the diversification of gender-sensitive, inclusive approaches to address VAW.The fellowship will also offer a unique platform to engage with the emerging debates centred on the prevention of gender-based violence amidst a shifting gender and policy landscape, as well as the new Domestic Abuse Act (2021). As such, it is a timely study, highly relevant to current debates, policy, and practice in the UK VAW sphere. Together the planned activities will contribute to the development of a robust, survivor-led evidence base for the reshaping of service, policy, and community responses to DVA, by engaging with academics, policy makers, practitioners, and people with lived experience of violence and abuse.