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VISION researchers present at the European Conference on Domestic Violence

Fourteen researchers from across the UKPRP VISION research consortium attended the September 2025 European Conference on Domestic Violence (ECDV) in Barcelona, Spain. The team presented key findings from their VISION research and several also convened a symposium. It was a successful turnout from the team and a fantastic networking opportunity.

The ECDV conference aims to support and reflect the aims of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. It was developed to enhance the visibility and connection of individuals working to address domestic violence in Europe, while also benefitting from the contribution of colleagues from outside Europe.

  • Anastasia Fadeeva convened the symposium Health perspectives on addressing domestic violence and abuse
  • Ladan Hashemi, Anastasia Fadeeva and Sally McManus presented Gender Asymmetry in Physical Health Associations with Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)
  • Anastasia Fadeeva and Niels Blom presented Injuries and Seeking Healthcare following Violence: Inequalities by Victim-Perpetrator Relationship
  • Vanessa Gash presented Hounded Out? Measuring the Effect of Workplace Violence on Women and Men’s Employment Transitions
  • Natalia Lewis and Lizzie Cook participated in the workshop, Community of practice for evidence syntheses on gender-based violence: learning together to enable methodological developments and improve evidence for policy and practice.
  • Lizzie Cook presented Analysing sex/gender-related motives and indicators in England and Wales
  • Sally McManus presented Commercial Determinants of Health: Opportunities for domestic violence prevention from a public health framework analysis which was written with VISION colleagues Olumide Adisa and Mark Bellis.
  • Ruth Weir convened the symposium Violence and abuse in young people’s intimate relationships
  • Polina Obolenskaya and Annie Bunce presented Too soon, too late: experience of and professional responses to abuse in teenage relationships
  • Ruth Weir presented ADA and its consequences: a rapid systematic review
  • Annie Bunce convened the symposium, Exploring multiple vulnerabilities using specialist services’ administrative data: Challenges, opportunities and lessons for the future
  • Maddy Janickyj and Leonie Tanczer presented Understanding Technology-Facilitated Abuse: Exploring real-life experiences through Support Services’ data
  • Annie Bunce presented The role of vulnerability in the inequity of health outcomes for DVA survivors
  • Hannah Manzur presented Disclosure to Formal Agencies and Specialised Support Services among Victims of Intimate Partner Domestic Abuse: Comparing Inequality Patterns, Victim Profiles, and Harms by Disclosure, written with VISION colleagues Annie and Ravi
  • Ladan Hashemi and Hannah Manzur presented Ethnic Disparities in outcomes from contact with DVA support services
  • Gene Feder convened the symposium Adding to the evidence base that community-based perpetrator programmes work to reduce abuse: Positive findings from REPROVIDE, a UK randomised controlled trial

Photographs:

  1. Top, left to right: Annie Bunce (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Ruth Weir (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Nicola Farrelly (University of Lancashire), Polina Obolenskaya (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Christine Barter (University of Lancashire), Aisling Barker (Islington City Council and City St George’s University of London), and Katrina Hadjimatheou (University of Essex)
  2. Middle, left to right: Hannah Manzur (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Ladan Hashemi (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Maddy Janickyj (VISION, University College London), and Annie Bunce (VISION, City St George’s University of London)
  3. Second from bottom: Vanessa Gash (VISION, City St George’s University of London)
  4. Bottom, left to right: Angel Deng (Kings College London), and Ladan Hashemi, Anastasia Fadeeva and Sally McManus (VISION, City St George’s University of London)

New national data collection on workplace violence: Dr Vanessa Gash leads winning entry to UKHLS Innovation Panel Competition 2025

Dr Vanessa Gash

We are thrilled to announce that Dr Vanessa Gash has been selected as a winner of the prestigious UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) Innovation Panel Competition 2025.

Dr Gash’s winning proposal introduces a new battery of indicators on workplace violence, a critical and timely topic in labour market research. These indicators will be fielded to a nationally representative sample as part of the UKHLS Innovation Panel, a unique test-bed for pioneering survey methods and content within the broader Understanding Society study.

This project not only generates valuable new data on workplace violence across the UK, but will also advance methodological innovation in how such sensitive topics are measured. Once collected, the data will be made publicly available, offering researchers across disciplines the opportunity to explore and build upon this work.

In addition to the data release, Dr Gash and her co-applicants, including Dr Niels Blom, will develop a series of working papers to disseminate findings and insights from the project. These papers will contribute to academic debates and inform policy discussions around workplace safety and wellbeing.

The Innovation Panel Competition is a highly competitive initiative that supports cutting-edge research ideas with real-world impact. We are proud to see Dr Gash’s work recognised and supported by Understanding Society.

For more details about the Innovation Panel and the competition, visit the Understanding Society website.

Exploring Better Responses to Teenage Relationship Abuse

Dr Ruth Weir

Blog by Dr Ruth Weir, VISION Senior Research Fellow in Criminology

Between April and July, Gloucestershire Constabulary’s Deputy Chief Constable Katy Barrow-Grint and I led a series of three place-based roundtables in Gloucestershire, Northumbria and Oxford, as part of our ongoing research into teenage relationship abuse (TRA).

The events were supported by VISION colleagues Annie Bunce, Polina Obolenskaya and Julia Sahin, alongside Kat Hadjimatheou, Honorary Senior Fellow at the Violence and Society Centre and Senior Lecturer at University of Essex. Each roundtable brought together a wide range of local practitioners—from policing, social care, education, health, and specialist services—as well as people with lived experience of adolescent domestic abuse or teenage relationship abuse. The aim was to explore what is working locally, where the challenges lie, and what would be needed for the local area to become a national exemplar in responding to TRA.

The level of engagement was striking. Attendance was high across all three sessions, with more than 80 participants in Northumbria alone. Far from being one-off conversations, the roundtables have sparked ongoing collaboration with local working groups already being set up to continue improving multi-agency responses to teenage relationship abuse.

The roundtables also provided a platform for Katy, VISION’s first Practitioner in Residence and now an Honorary Research Fellow, to share early findings from her national survey of police forces’ current responses to teenage relationship abuse. These insights are helping to build a clearer picture of practice across the country and will inform the next stage of research and policy development.

For further information, please contact Ruth at ruth.weir@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Dr Ruth Weir and Gloucestershire Constabulary’s Deputy Chief Constable Katy Barrow-Grint

Knowledge Transfer Partnership award for City St George’s UoL and the National Centre for Domestic Violence

Dr Darren Cook

Blog by Dr Darren Cook, VISION Research Fellow in Natural Language Processing

Introduction

I’m pleased to share that a cross-university collaboration between City St George’s School of Social Policy and Global Affairs (SPGA) and School of Science and Technology (SST) has been successful in a recent Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) competition.

Working alongside our industry partner, the National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV), our project will develop data science capabilities that enhance automation, scalability, and efficiency at NCDV. This will enable improved support, faster response times, and better outcomes for victims of domestic abuse. The project is due to begin in early 2026 and will run for approximately two years.

Importantly, this is the first KTP involving SPGA. As such, it marks a significant milestone for the school, creating new pathways for impactful collaboration with industry and laying the groundwork for future projects that can translate academic expertise into measurable social change.

What is a KTP?

A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) is a collaborative programme between UK businesses and universities, supported and part funded by Innovate UK [1].

Each KTP addresses a specific business challenge, enabling the transfer of knowledge and expertise from academia into industry through a KTP Associate. The Associate is employed by the business but supported by an academic supervisor, delivering a structured package of work designed to drive innovation and growth.

KTPs are proven to have a significant impact, generating more than £2 billion for the UK economy between 2010 and 2020 [2]. They also support the professional development of Associates, who gain unique experience at the intersection of academia and industry.

What is the focus of this KTP?

Having been successful in our funding application, I will serve as the Academic Supervisor, working alongside Dr Chris Childs (Academic Lead) and the appointed KTP Associate. Together, we will design and implement advanced data science tools to automate key data processes within NCDV.

By streamlining and scaling these processes, the project will:

  • Enable NCDV to support more victims in need.
  • Reduce response times, ensuring urgent legal protections can be accessed more quickly.
  • Provide a replicable model of innovation that could benefit other organisations in the domestic abuse sector.

This partnership also has substantial potential impact for REF, by generating demonstrable evidence of social and economic benefit from research-led activity.

Who are the NCDV?

The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) [3] is a Community Interest Company (CIC) that helps victims of domestic abuse obtain urgent legal protection through the courts.

Domestic abuse is a widespread and pressing issue:

  • An estimated 2.1 million people in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse per year (1.4 million women and 751,000 men) [4].
  • Police in England and Wales receive over 100 calls relating to domestic abuse every hour [5].

Against this backdrop, the work of NCDV is vital. This KTP will strengthen their capacity to respond to high demand and ensure more victims can access the protection they need.

References

[1] Innovate UK – Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
[2] Innovate UK, KTP Impact Report
[3] National Centre for Domestic Violence
[4] Office for National Statistics, “Domestic abuse prevalence and trends, England and Wales: year ending March 2023.”
[5] Refuge, “Domestic abuse statistics.”

For further information, please contact Darren at darren.cook@citystgeorges.ac.uk

New leadership role in National Criminology Network

Dr Darren Cook

We’re delighted to share that Dr Darren Cook, Research Fellow at VISION and the Violence & Society Centre at City St George’s UoL, has been appointed Co-Chair of the British Society of Criminology’s Policing Network.

In this role, Darren will help lead national discussions on contemporary policing research and practice, and support collaboration across the UK’s criminology and policing research community.

Darren will play a key role in shaping the Network as a space for thoughtful, impactful, and outward-facing policing research.

The team plans to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration, support early-career researchers, and ensure criminological perspectives are part of broader debates around policing, technology, and justice.

Call for Frontiers in Sociology abstracts: Enhancing data collection and integration to Reduce health harms and inequalities linked to violence

Frontiers in Sociology is currently welcoming submissions of original research for the following research topic: Enhancing Data Collection and Integration to Reduce Health Harms and Inequalities Linked to Violence.

This edition is guest-edited by Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa (University of Bristol and the UKPRP VISION research consortium), Dr Annie Bunce (City St. George’s, UoL and the UKPRP VISION research consortium), and Katie Smith (City St. George’s, UoL / University of Bristol).

Submissions should focus on any of the following:

  • advancing measurement approaches which emphasise cross-sector harmonisation to better evaluate interventions, address health inequalities, and reduce violence
  • addressing any form of violence (e.g., physical, non-physical, technology-facilitated) and its impacts on health, social and economic well-being, and marginalised groups, considering intersections of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, and religion

Research using existing datasets or primary data (quantitative or qualitative), cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary approaches (e.g., sociology, criminology, public health), and lived experience perspectives is encouraged.

Contributions may include conceptual reviews, methodological innovations, empirical studies and systematic reviews on themes such as health inequalities, intervention effectiveness, outcome measurement, data harmonisation, and linkage strategies.

Abstracts are due by 7th April 2025, and the deadline for manuscripts is 28th July 2025.

For details of the different article types accepted and associated costs, please follow this link https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/for-authors/publishing-fees.

For more information and to submit an abstract or manuscript, please use the “I’m interested” link below or visit the Research Topic page here https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/67291/enhancing-data-collection-and-integration-to-reduce-health-harms-and-inequalities-linked-to-violence. 

This special edition provides an excellent opportunity to advance knowledge in this critical area. Please do reach out and contact us if you have any questions: annie.bunce@city.ac.uk

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VISION responds to Parliamentary, government & non-government consultations

Consultation, evidence and inquiry submissions are an important part of our work at VISION. Responding to Parliamentary, government and non-government organisation consultations ensures that a wide range of opinions and voices are factored into the policy decision making process. As our interdisciplinary research addresses violence and how it cuts across health, crime and justice and the life course, we think it is important to take the time to answer any relevant call and to share our insight and findings to support improved policy and practice. We respond as VISION, the Violence & Society Centre, and sometimes in collaboration with others. Below are the links to our published responses and evidence from June 2022.

  1. UK Parliament – Public Accounts Committee – Inquiry: Tackling Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG). Our submission was published in April 2025.
  2. UK Parliament – Women and Equalities Committee – Inquiry: Community Cohesion. Our submission was published in February 2025.
  3. UK Parliament – Call for evidence on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Our submission was published in February 2025.
  4. UK Parliament – Public Accounts Committee – Inquiry: Use of Artificial Intelligence in Government. Our submission was published in January 2025.
  5. UK Parliament – Public Accounts Committee – Inquiry: Tackling Homelessness. Our submission with Dr Natasha Chilman was published in January 2025. See the full report
  6. Home Office – Legislation consultation: Statutory Guidance for the Conduct of Domestic Homicide Reviews. Our submission was published on the VISION website in July 2024.
  7. UK Parliament – Women and Equalities Committee – Inquiry: The rights of older people. Our submission was published in November 2023
  8. UK Parliament  – Women and Equalities Committee – Inquiry: The impact of the rising cost of living on women. Our submission was published in November 2023
  9. UK Parliament – Women and Equalities Committee – Inquiry: The escalation of violence against women and girls. Our submission published in September 2023
  10. Home Office – Legislation consultation: Machetes and other bladed articles: proposed legislation (submitted response 06/06/2023). Government response to consultation and summary of public responses was published in August 2023
  11. Welsh Government – Consultation: National action plan to prevent the abuse of older people. Summary of the responses published in April 2023
  12. Race Disparity Unit (RDU) – Consultation: Standards for Ethnicity Data (submitted response 30/08/2022). Following the consultation, a revised version of the data standards was published in April 2023
  13. UK Parliament – The Home Affairs Committee – Call for evidence: Human Trafficking. Our submission was published in March 2023
  14. UN expert – Call for evidence: Violence, abuse and neglect in older people. Our submission was published in February 2023
  15. UK Parliament – The Justice and Home Affairs Committee – Inquiry: Family migration. Our submission was published in September 2022 and a report was published following the inquiry in February 2023
  16. Home Office – Consultation: Controlling or Coercive behaviour Statutory Guidance. Our submission was published in June 2022

For further information, please contact us at VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk

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Implications of changing domestic abuse measurement on the Crime Survey for England & Wales

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is making a major decision this month on the future of Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) Domestic abuse measurement and monitoring.

Last year, ONS ran an experiment where half of the CSEW sample got the domestic abuse module used since 2005, and the other half got a new module that is not comparable with the previous one. ONS intend to move over entirely to the new module in the next data collection (2025/26).

Loss of the existing module has major implications: it is world-leading, uses globally comparable items, and with trend data going back to 2005. Without consistently administered core items from that module, it will no longer be possible to:

  • Produce long-term trends over time in domestic abuse for England and Wales.
  • Group a decade of survey years together to have enough cases to robustly examine domestic abuse in particular regions, minoritised groups, and by other protected characteristics for many years. This is essential for understanding inequalities in violence and subsequent service contact, and whether these are changing.

The new module is problematic for many reasons:

  • Is not a standardised measure, has undergone little validation or psychometric testing, and is not comparable with anything used previously or in any other country or study.  
  • It separates data collection between former and current partner based on relationship status at the time of the interview, not at the time of abuse. This distinction creates confusion for interpretation of analysis and may be misinterpreted. The distinction is also problematic for classification of casual and other relationship types.
  • The overhaul of the module was intended to align measurement with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 definition, but it appears that domestic abuse as recognised by that Act cannot be identified by this module.

We urgently recommend that before losing this world-leading time series and relying on an untested, not comparable, and flawed new approach to DA measurement in England and Wales, that ONS:

  1. Pause: continue the split-sample data collection for one more year.
  2. Test the new approach: fully compare data collected using the new and old modules data so the validity and utility of the new measures can be evaluated appropriately, and its impact on inequalities assessed.
  3. Publish these results publicly: and fully consult once stakeholders understand all the implications of having data collected in each way before the decision to roll out new data collection is finalised.
  4. With this information, then compare all options: such as maintaining some of the existing questions alongside adding new coercive control items. This straightforward approach would ensure the utility of the survey for national trends (in both England and Wales) and analysis of inequalities and minoritised groups, while also improving the measurement of coercive control.

We urge others who feel similarly to contact ONS at CrimeStatistics@ons.gov.uk  or contact us at VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk if you would like to discuss.

Note that ONS is planning a raft of further changes with similar implications for trends and analysis of minoritised groups, including:

  • Removal of the sexual victimisation module from next data collection (2025/26), with redevelopment at some future date.
  • Removal and redevelopment of the nature of partner abuse questions, which cover DA survivors service use and police contact and are essential to understanding whether some groups are underserved by services.

These will further undermine continuity of data for trends and the ability to analyse minoritised groups or by protected characteristics.

For researchers interested in combining CSEW waves to enable robust analysis of inequalities by protected characteristics and for minoritised groups, VISION researcher Niels Blom has published syntax: https://vision.city.ac.uk/news/new-possibilities-created-by-crime-survey-wave-integration/.

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VISION researcher, Lizzie Cook, speaks at Dutch Embassy Just Talk(s) event on femicide

On 10 December 2024, celebrated globally as Human Rights Day and the final day of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence campaign, the Dutch Embassy in London organised a panel discussion on femicide and the criminalisation of violence against women and girls.

Lizzie Cook was invited to speak as part of the event which was opened by the Dutch Ambassador Paul Huijts and Liaison Magistrate Wendela Mulder, and moderated by Lotte Wildeboer. The afternoon consisted of talks by Professor Sandra Walklate (of the VISION Advisory Board), Judith van Schoonderwoerd den Bezemer-Wolters (Dutch Public Prosecutor for Domestic and Sexual Violence), Katie Hoeger and Angela Whitaker (VKPP and College of Policing), and Janine Janssen (Dutch Police Academy). The event was part of a series of Just Talk(s) organised by the Dutch Embassy which seek to foster dialogue and exchange ideas on particular issues.

The panel addressed a range of themes including challenges in current definitions of femicide, the implications for data and measurement, and what this means for prevention.

To read more about some of the themes discussed in this panel, do take a look at Lizzie, Sandra and Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s 2023 special subsection of Current Sociology: Re-imagining what counts as femicide which brings together contributions on femicide from the UK, South Africa and Latin America.

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Deputy Chief Constable awarded Practitioner in Residence at Violence and Society Centre

Katy Barrow-Grint, Deputy Chief Constable, Gloucestershire

City St George’s, UoL, offers a Practitioner in Residence programme at the School for Policy and Global Affairs. It is for mid-level and senior policy practitioners within the UK and provides a platform to grow and explore their practice in partnership with the school.

Katy Barrow-Grint, Deputy Chief Constable in Gloucestershire and an executive leader in national policing, became aware of the opportunity via her work with VISION Senior Research Fellow, Dr Ruth Weir,  on the VISION adolescent domestic abuse (ADA) research programme. Having recently written a book entitled ‘Policing Domestic Abuse’ with Ruth and others, the research identified a national gap academically and in policing with how ADA is understood.

Katy’s focus will be on how police constabularies document ADA and developing a better understanding of the impact of the statutory age limitations on the practical work police officers do on the front line.

Forces do not routinely record ADA as the statutory guidance states that domestic abuse occurs in relationships where both parties are aged 16 or over. As a result, whilst crimes against young people will be recorded and investigated, they are not necessarily classified as domestic abuse, and it may be that child protection, domestic abuse or front-line response teams deal with the case.

Her project work will seek to understand how forces are recording such incidents, and what type of officer and role is investigating. Katy will work with policing nationally through the National Police Chief‘s Council (NPCC) domestic abuse and child protection portfolios and collate an up-to-date picture across all forces in England and Wales to understand how they are recording and who is investigating ADA.

Katy is also undertaking specific localised work in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Northumbria, hosting roundtables with Dr Ruth Weir and  practitioners from all relevant agencies to gain a qualitative understanding of the problems staff encounter when dealing with ADA.

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