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Violence is a risk factor for adverse clinical outcomes in severe mental illness

A longitudinal study investigating the experiences of violence suffered by those with severe mental illness (SMI) was recently published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. VISION researchers Vishal Bhavsar, Angus Roberts, and Robert Stewart worked with lead author Ava Mason and others and found that people with SMI and who experienced violence are more likely to need future emergency and inpatient mental care.

The aim of their research was to understand whether violence recorded early in someone’s contact with mental health services could help predict these later outcomes. Anonymised electronic mental health records from approximately 6,000 adults who received care from South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust between 2007 and 2022 were investigated.

By applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) to records of those diagnosed with schizophrenia or related disorders, or bipolar disorder or mania, the researchers were able to determine whether any current or previous physical, domestic or sexual violence had been recorded in the first three months after someone first came into contact with services.

Results showed that people living with SMI who had violence recorded in their mental health records early in their care were at increased risk of crisis service use, hospital admission and detention under the Mental Health Act in the years that followed. This highlights the importance of identifying and responding to experiences of violence as part of routine mental health care.

In conclusion, experiences of violence, to the extent to which patients report their experiences and these are recorded, are risk factors for worse outcomes in severe mental illness, only partly accounted for by clinical status around the time of presentation. More systematic ascertainment and recording of victimisation needs to be considered if interventions are to be appropriately targeted.

To download the article: An investigation of recorded physical, domestic and sexual victimisation as risk factors for adverse clinical outcomes in severe mental illness: longitudinal study

To cite: Mason AJC, Bhavsar V, Roberts A, et al. An investigation of recorded physical, domestic and sexual victimisation as risk factors for adverse clinical outcomes in severe mental illness: longitudinal study. The British Journal of Psychiatry. Published online 2026:1-8. doi:10.1192/bjp.2026.10648

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Violence as a Boundary Object: Implications for the Field of International Political Sociology

Violence is an enduring global challenge: it can occur in the context of interpersonal relationships, as well as interstate and intercommunal conflict. The synchronous focus on the global and the social in international political sociology might naturally transcend some paradigmatic divisions over what constitutes violence and at which level of analysis it might be studied.

The study of violence is core to the study of International Relations (IR), however, there has been little analysis of the complex concept of violence and how it functions at the intersection of IR, sociology, and politics as well as other disciplines represented by journalism and health.

The entry point, then, is to consider whether working across academic disciplines can better account for this complexity. In order to do this, the researchers, led by VISION Co-Investigator Alexandria Innes, ask not simply what violence is, but how violence comes to be known at all.

Andri and colleagues Koen Slootmaeckers, Elizabeth Cook (VISION), Olumide Adisa (VISION), Lindsey Blumell, Gene Feder (VISION), Jana Kriechbaum and Laura Sjoberg, examine the conditions that shape how violence becomes intelligible within and across disciplines, and how these conditions are shaped by power that is operational in academic disciplines, and in the world. Violence in the world, whilst present in our discussions as a referent, is not our main focus; rather, the relationship between violence in the world and violence in the academy emerged as the central problematic shaping our discussion.

This collective discussion, follows from a series of roundtables, which situated violence as a “boundary object”: objects that are “plastic” enough to exist across different disciplines and languages, but “robust” enough to maintain a common identity. The roundtables were built around three themes, replicated below, to interrogate, test, and push the boundaries of plasticity and robustness on the concept of violence across disciplines. The conversation that emerged is presented in this collective discussion as a conversation, with representation of divergent positions and the thought processes they inspired.

To download the article: Collective Discussion: Violence as a Boundary Object: Implications for the Field of International Political Sociology 

To cite: Alexandria Innes, Koen Slootmaeckers, Elizabeth Cook, Olumide Adisa, Lindsey Blumell, Gene Feder, Jana Kriechbaum, Laura Sjoberg, Collective Discussion: Violence as a Boundary Object: Implications for the Field of International Political Sociology, International Political Sociology, Volume 20, Issue 3, September 2026, olag024, https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olag024

For further information: Please contact Andri at alexandria.innes@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Using Natural Language Processing in Domestic Homicide Reviews

Since 2011, there has been a statutory requirement in England and Wales to conduct a Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) into any domestic abuse-related death: a multi-agency review into the death of a person aged 16 or over that appears to have resulted from violence, abuse or neglect from an intimate partner, family member or household member.

However, analyses of large numbers of DHRs are rare. One of the core challenges is the time and effort required to analyse narrative text within reports. Doing so manually is both time-consuming and resource-intensive and is a primary reason why researchers typically focus on only a portion of the available data. Natural Language Processing (NLP)—a sub-branch of artificial intelligence that enables computers to interpret and process natural language—provides a viable and scalable alternative by offsetting much of the heavy data processing to a computer.

In this study protocol, developed by VISION Research Fellow Dr Darren Cook and VISION Co-Investigator Dr Elizabeth Cook (both at City St George’s University of London) with Sumanta Roy and Rani Selvarajah of Imkaan, and VISION Co-Investigator Professor Ravi Thiara (University of Warwick), they outline a study to assess the feasibility of applying NLP to DHRs.

The VISION and Imkaan team outline a collaborative approach which balances the speed and scale of automation with the embedded knowledge and expertise of practitioners. This approach helps to ensure that outputs of NLP are sensitive and transparent about the biases common within datasets on violence and abuse.

Based on initial consultations, the team have identified a series of priority research questions for investigation. In addition, they outline details of an ongoing collaboration with one partner, Imkaan. The protocol describes the data access, and retrieval and analysis stages before summarising how feasibility will be evaluated. The protocol concludes by arguing that working with practitioners who hold deep contextual knowledge about the social realities of violence and abuse, including language, risks, and experiences, means that tools can be developed that are accountable to communities and appropriately applied to real-world problems.

To download the protocol: A collaborative approach to applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs): A study protocol

To cite: Cook D, Cook EA, Roy S, Thiara R, Selvarajah R (2026) A collaborative approach to applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs): A study protocol. PLoS One 21(5): e0348948. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0348948

For further information: Please contact Lizzie at elizabeth.cook@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Commissioning Pathways for Domestic Homicide / Abuse-Related Death Reviews: Are All Deaths Counted?

Domestic homicide reviews (being renamed domestic abuse-related death reviews) have been undertaken in England and Wales since 2011. However, relatively little is known about the commissioning process for these reviews, including where notifications come from, if the types of cases being referred are changing, and the outcomes. Knowledge is also limited about who is involved in these decisions and who is informed when a decision is made.

For this project, Dr James Rowlands (University of Durham), VISION Co-Investigator Dr Elizabeth Cook (City St George’s University of London) and research consultant Dr Althea Cribb, used data requested from the partnership bodies responsible for commissioning domestic homicide / abuse-related death reviews about notifications and decision-making between January 2017 and December 2024. Their findings highlight the changing profile of cases, variability in decision-making, and gaps in communication and oversight.

To download the paper: Commissioning Pathways for Domestic Homicide / Abuse-Related Death Reviews: Are All Deaths Counted?

To cite: Rowlands, J., Cook, E., & Cribb, A. (2026, May 11). Commissioning Pathways for Domestic Homicide / Abuse-Related Death Reviews: Are All Deaths Counted?. https://doi.org/10.15128/r1kp78gg500

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Violence, Injustice, and Inequality: The State of International Migration

On June 14, 2023, a fishing trawler with over 700 asylum seekers and refugees predominantly from Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt and Afghanistan on board, sank in the Messenia region of the Mediterranean. The travelers on board had no food or water, the engine was overheating, and a number of people on board were alleged to have died. The boat eventually capsized and sank after floundering for two days in Greek search and rescue waters while under observation by the Hellenic Coast Guard. During this time no rescue operation was launched. It was only after the boat capsized that a search and rescue operation occurred. Just over 100 men were rescued, and 84 bodies were recovered from the water, including all the women and children on board.

On June 18, 2023, a private submersible vessel launched on a sightseeing tour of the Titantic shipwreck. The small vessel was occupied by four passengers and the captain. The passengers on board had paid approximately £250,000 each for the voyage. Shortly after the vessel began its dive, contact was lost and soon afterward a global search and rescue operation was launched. Later, debris of the submersible was confirmed on the ocean floor, and all five occupants were declared dead.

The temporal juxtaposition of these two maritime disasters, and the disparity in both the number of lives lost and the effort spent to save the lives of those on the vessels throw international inequality and injustice into sharp relief. While there is a huge and obvious wealth disparity between the two groups cited in the examples above, economics alone cannot explain the contrast between the framing of and responses to these two disasters.

In her latest publication, Violence, Injustice, and Inequality: The State of International Migration, VISION Co-Investigator Dr Alexandria Innes focuses on the gross inequality that is evident in international migration governance and management. Framed in the concept of inequality as it is variously yet incompletely theorized in international relations scholarship and drawing on Ranciere’s equality as practice, she situates violence as an indicator of inequality that reveals injustice.

Using a case study of domestic violence in the context of the UK’s “hostile environment,” Andri demonstrates how states, exemplified by the UK, adopt domestic violence as a mechanism of immigration deterrence. She argues that, despite the acceptance of domestic violence as a social wrong, and the evidence that domestic violence is pervasive in society, migrant women in insecure status are denied access to necessary forms of protection, which leads to prolonged exposure to domestic violence and reveals continuous violence against migrants in insecure status.

Attending to violence, and in particular state violence, in the global politics of migration reveals the injustice of embedded inequality in the international system. While injustice is immediately legible in violent events, injustice is also embedded in the unequal social order, continuously ordering and bordering protection from and submission to violence.

To download the paper: Violence, Injustice, and Inequality: The State of International Migration

To cite: Alexandria Innes, Violence, Injustice, and Inequality: The State of International Migration, Global Studies Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 2, April 2026, ksag058, https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksag058

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Intimate partner relationship abuse between men: An interdisciplinary seminar

 

Wednesday 17 June 2026, 13:00  – 16:45, in person only

This free, interdisciplinary seminar brings together leading voices from research, lived experience, performance, and specialist practice to examine intimate partner violence in relationships between men and consider implications for policy, research, professional practice, and wider system response.

Register here: Ticket Tailor

Despite increasing recognition that abuse within intimate male relationships is a significant public health, social justice, and service delivery issue, it remains under recognised across many systems and disciplines. Survivors frequently encounter barriers to recognition, disclosure, and support, while policy, professional training, and public discourse have historically paid limited attention to these experiences. 

This event will explore the dynamics, impacts, and structural challenges surrounding abuse in this context, and consider how research, policy, practice, and public understanding can evolve to better respond. 

The programme combines research presentations, creative performance, lived experience testimony, and expert commentary to offer a multi-dimensional exploration of the issue. The seminar will include catering and: 

  • A brief research presentation on prevalence, dynamics, barriers to recognition, and current evidence gaps from Dr Steven Maxwell 
  • A monologue from He Kept Me Safe, a research based verbatim play developed from survivor narratives exploring abuse within intimate male relationships by Dr Edgar Rodriguez-Doran 
  • A keynote contribution from broadcaster, comedian and survivor advocate James Barr, reflecting on his lived experience through comedy and the role of storytelling 
  • A talk from Tanaka Mhishi, writer and researcher in masculinity, trauma and sexual violence, exploring masculinity, trauma, violence, and engaging men in conversations about healing 
  • Brief facilitated interdisciplinary discussion on implications for research, policy, education, commissioning, service design, and practice 

This event aims to stimulate critical interdisciplinary dialogue and contribute to wider thinking on inclusive responses to domestic abuse and sexual violence. 

 

Intended Audience / Invitees 

The seminar is intended for a broad interdisciplinary audience including: 

  • Researchers and academics across social science, health, psychology, gender studies, criminology, law, public health, and related disciplines 
  • Policy makers and strategic leaders working in domestic abuse, sexual violence, health, justice, equalities, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and public policy 
  • Health and social care professionals 
  • Mental health practitioners and psychological therapists 
  • Domestic abuse and sexual violence services 
  • Policing, criminal justice, and legal professional 
  • LGBTQ+ and community sector organisations 
  • Sexual health and public health professionals 
  • Education and professional training providers 
  • Students and trainees with relevant academic or professional interests 
  • Wider stakeholders with interest in trauma, masculinity, violence prevention, and inclusive service/system design

 

Programme 

1.00 pm: Registration and Lunch 

1.30 pm: Welcome and Opening Remarks 

1.40 pm: Research Presentation: Understanding Intimate Partner Violence in Male Relationships: Prevalence, Dynamics and System Challenges 

2.00 pm: Monologue: He Kept Me Safe 

2.40 pm: Facilitated Discussion and Audience Reflection 

3.00 pm: Break 

3.15 pm: James Barr: Lived Experience, Comedy, and Public Discourse 

3.45 pm: Audience Q&A 

4.00 pm: Tanaka Mhishi: Masculinity, Trauma and Engaging Men in Conversations About Violence and Healing 

4.30 pm: Panel Discussion / Closing Audience Q&A 

4.45 pm: Close 

Join us at this free seminar, 17 June, Northampton Suite, City St George’s UoL, Clerkenwell, London, 1300 – 1645. To book your place please register here: Ticket Tailor 

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Building better survey data on violence

 

By Sally McManus, VISION co-Deputy Director

Good policy depends on good data. While administrative data sources provide key insight, only surveys of the general population can evidence the extent to which violence is experienced, how it has changed in prevalence over time, and whether some groups are more affected – or less likely to get support – than others.  

The VISION consortium is working to improve the measurement of violence in the UK. Here we highlight examples of how VISION has advanced survey methods and generated new survey datasets to improve the evidence base on violence across the population. 

Ensuring the questions on violence get asked 

VISION research has challenged the historical reluctance to ask survey participants about their experiences of violence, with Dr Lizzie Cook arguing that the topics and people excluded from research cannot be counted or represented. VISION has worked with partners and ethics committees to improve and extend survey measurement so that it more faithfully and fully reflects the realities survivors face.  

Developing new questions on violence at work 

VISION researcher Prof Vanessa Gash has been working with the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to pilot an entirely new set of questions on experiences of violence at work. Workplace violence has historically been poorly captured in national surveys. These new questions will make it possible to examine who is affected, in which sectors, and, because UKHLS follows the same people over time, how experiences change within individuals across their working lives. 

Building a clearer picture of economic abuse 

In a project supported by VISION, Rosa Wilson Garwood and Surviving Economic Abuse developed and administered a detailed set of survey questions on economic abuse. This work has deepened understanding of the different component parts of economic abuse and revealed important inequalities in who experiences it. There is now a national dataset available for download from the UK Data Service. It means that researchers can now examine the structure and breadth of economic abuse rather than relying on narrow proxy measures of it. 

Capturing the links between types of violence 

A new approach to the measurement of violence and abuse was developed by VISION researcher Prof Sally McManus for the 2024 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS). Rather than treating different forms of violence in isolation, the new approach spans a range of types of violence and abuse in a way that allows data users to examine how they interact, including co-occurrence and their combined relationship with mental health outcomes. The new dataset is now available for researchers to use, downloadable from the UK Data Service. 

Evidencing the long-term impacts of violence 

Dr Polina Obolenskaya co-ordinates VISION’s responses to consultations, including on survey content. We are keen to encourage the UK’s birth cohort studies and other longitudinal surveys to ask about violence and abuse. Where adopted, such questions have helped generate some of the first longitudinal data on violence and abuse, opening up new research questions about trajectories, risk, and recovery across the life course. 

Adding depth through open-text responses 

Survey approaches can be augmented through the collection of open-text responses, enabling qualitative insight to be generated at scale alongside structured measures. Research by Dr Nadia Aghtale and Fatemeh Babakhani with VISION researcher Dr Ladan Hashemi used an anonymous online survey and open-ended questions to capture women’s narratives of violence and their proposed solutions, revealing perspectives and forms of harm that are often missed in closed survey items. Their use of online data collection methods has shown how survivors from marginalised or hidden populations – often underrepresented in traditional survey methods – can also be reached via online platforms. 

Supporting researchers with designing and using surveys 

VISION has produced tools and guidance to help researchers design and analyse survey data. Dr Alexandria Innes created the VISION Risk of Bias Toolkit to inform understanding of the potential biases in different data sources, and Dr Hannah Manzur critiqued standardised measurement of ethnicity in national survey data proposing changes to the way surveys ask about and code ethnicity. Dr Niels Blom and Prof Vanessa Gash’s examined the strengths and weaknesses of different violence victimisation measures; while Prof Sian Oram and Dr Vish Bhavsar reviewed violence perpetration measures; and Dr Ladan Hashemi and Maryam Ghasemi’s make recommendations for improved measurement of adverse childhood experiences. To help those analysing survey data, Dr Niels Blom generated and archived code that helps users of the Crime Survey for England and Wales to merge multiple years of data, for better examination on lower prevalence groups in society. 

Why it matters 

Survey data isn’t perfect. But surveys provide one key part of the evidence landscape. Together, these developments contribute to a shift in the survey landscape. Violence and abuse have been excluded, undercounted or narrowly defined in national statistics. These new resources help give researchers better tools, and policymakers better evidence, to respond to how violence is patterned in the general population 

For further information about and to access the new survey datasets on violence, please contact: 

  • Vanessa Gash about the new workplace violence module on UKHLS, which will be archived for users in the future 

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Upcoming webinar – Left behind: People without support after experiencing violence

 

Thursday 4 June 2026, 13:00  – 14:30, online

Join VISION for a free webinar exploring groups who can be overlooked by health services, policing, and specialist support systems after experiencing violence.

Register here: TicketTailor – 4 June VISION webinar 

Many people affected by violence do not receive the help they need, for a variety of reasons. At VISION, we’ve analysed data sources such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales to better understand these gaps. In some cases, individuals do not seek medical care from hospitals or GPs for violence-related injuries, while others choose not to report incidents to the police. There are also those indirectly affected—such as people whose loved ones have experienced serious assault—who frequently go unsupported. In addition, a significant but less visible group includes victims of intimate partner violence and serious sexual assault in England and Wales who do not disclose their experiences, particularly to specialist services.

This research offers fresh insights into the risk factors, lived experiences, inequalities, and consequences of violence among those who neither seek nor receive support—the left behind.

After the short presentations, there will be a ’roundtable’ discussion with all present to look deeper into each presentation and talk about the barriers and opportunities. We want to better identify these missing populations and understand their behaviours for not seeking help and conversely for those that are looking for support but the services aren’t necessarily there.

We welcome anyone working in government, police, healthcare, academia, specialist services, education and the community and voluntary sector interested in and / or working in violence prevention and support for those affected.

Programme

Chair: Kimberly Cullen, VISION Knowledge Exchange Manager, City St George’s University of London

Disclosure of Intimate Partner Abuse and Sexual Violence to Formal Agencies and Specialist Services: Comparing Inequality Patterns, Victim Profiles, and Harms by Disclosure, Dr Hannah Manzur, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s University of London and Dr Annie Bunce

  • Our study examines the hidden population of victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and serious sexual assault (SSA) in England and Wales who report non-disclosure of their victimisation, particularly to specialised services. Whilst evidence-building largely relies on victim-survivors’ disclosure through help-seeking pathways and interventions, the experiences and inequality patterns for victim-survivors outside of these pathways are significantly missing from evidence and support provision. In particular, specialised services support some of the most marginalised and invisible victims of violence, yet barriers to disclosure and resource limitations pose significant challenges for both data collection and support access for these groups. The nationally representative Crime Survey for England and Wales offers a unique opportunity to analyse data on IPV and SSA victim-survivors who have not contacted specialised services or disclosed to any other formal agency (inc. The police and health services). Using pooled data (2004-2019) on past-year IPV and lifetime SSA, we compare inequality patterns (by gender, ethnicity, and migrant-status) and victim profiles (including risk-factors, victimisation characteristics, and harms) of victim-survivors based on disclosure (CSEW only, formal agency, or specialised services). Here, we reveal new insights into the risk-factors, experiences, inequalities, and impacts of violence against otherwise hidden violence victims, particularly those excluded from specialised services support.

Healthcare inequalities following violence: analysis of the Crime Survey for England and Wales 2010-2024, Dr Anastasia Fadeeva, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s University of London

  • Although healthcare is key to supporting victims of physical violence, some do not receive it despite injuries. The present research used the Crime Survey for England and Wales (combined waves 2010-2024) to identify which victims of physical violence were less likely to receive healthcare. Despite the presence of injuries, in almost a half of the incidents, victims receive no healthcare. We examined individual and violence-related factors that were associated with not receiving healthcare following violence victimisation. 

Reporting of violence victimisation to the police in England and Wales, Dr Polina Obolenskaya, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s University of London and Dr Annie Bunce, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s University of London

  • Who reports violence to the police, and under what circumstances, remains a critical but under‑examined question in England and Wales. Although national victimisation surveys consistently show that more than half of violent incidents never come to the attention of police, existing research is fragmented, often focused on single forms of violence (e.g., intimate partner or sexual violence), based on small studies or non-UK contexts. By mapping multiple routes through which violence does or does not come to the attention of the criminal justice system, this research advances an understanding of the “justice gap” and offers evidence with implications for policy, prevention, and victim‑survivor support. 

Indirect victims of violence: Mental health and the close relatives of serious assault victims in England, Professor Sally McManus, VISION co-Deputy Director, City St George’s University of London and Dr Elizabeth Cook, VISION co-Investigator, City St George’s University of London

  • Violence does not just harm direct victims; its effects ripple out through families. Drawing on a representative survey of adults in England, this study found that one in twenty adults were closely related to a victim of serious assault, and that these relatives carry a disproportionate burden of poor mental health. Even after accounting for their own histories of violence, adversity, and disadvantage, close family members face significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety, and feeling unsafe: evidence that policy must recognise, and victim services be resourced to respond to, the needs of families too. 

Join us at this free webinar on 4 June, 13:00 – 14:30. To book your place please register here: TicketTailor – 4 June VISION webinar 

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Using AI to investigate publicly available documents on violence prevention

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly applied in public health, yet their use for analysing fragmented, multi-sectoral policy landscapes remains underdeveloped. Many applications have focused on service delivery, such as AI-powered chatbots, data surveillance and monitoring, and tracking social media interactions for emerging risks, with less attention paid to how AI might support policy analysis. This is especially true for the violence prevention sector, where AI is gaining traction as a solution for triaging help-seeking calls, detecting threatening messages, predicting conflict and improving police data, but not for understanding the policy landscape.

Policy responses to violence are undergoing scrutiny in the UK, coinciding with the recent publication of an updated cross-government strategy addressing violence against women and girls. This renewed focus places increased demands on researchers and policymakers to rapidly synthesise large and fragmented bodies of policy evidence spanning multiple sectors and both local and national government. Traditional approaches to policy review formed around a wholly manual approach may struggle to meet these demands within policy-relevant timeframes.

This research, an exploratory, proof-of-concept case study, aimed to describe the development and preliminary exploration of an AI-enabled tool designed to synthesise evidence from violence-related policy documents in the UK. The team was led by VISION Research Fellow Dr Darren Cook and inlcuded several members from the wider VISION consortium, Dr Elizabeth Cook, Kimberly Cullen, Professor Sally McManus, Professor Gene Feder and Professor Mark Bellis. 

For their article, Artificial intelligence in critical synthesis of public health responses to violence: A novel application to UK violence prevention policy, the team compiled a corpus of publicly available UK policy and strategy documents on violence (N = 343) through expert review, manual searches of government and third sector organisation websites, and automated web scraping.

Then, they used the corpus to train an existing AI framework and deployed it through a question-answer interface. Stakeholders working in violence prevention (academics, practitioners in specialist services and government officials) were invited to pose natural-language questions about violence policy and consider the system’s utility and the usefulness of its outputs. Their feedback indicated that the AI generated reports were well-grounded in the underlying source documents. Syntheses aligned closely with the documents in the tool, and the inclusion of document references and page-level citations supported credibility assessments. Corpus coverage statistics were considered particularly helpful when judging the robustness of responses. 

This research contributes by documenting the early application of an AI-enabled tool designed to support exploratory policy analysis. The team illustrates an emerging analytic capability and its potential role within policy-oriented research workflows. By demonstrating how a document-grounded, closed-domain AI system can be used to interrogate policy framings and identify potential siloes, this work addresses a gap in current public health applications of AI, specifically in the context of violence prevention.

To access the VISION AI tool to ask your own questions about violence prevention: VISION: Violence, Health & Society  

To download the paper: Artificial intelligence in critical synthesis of public health responses to violence: A novel application to UK violence prevention policy

To cite: Cook, D., Cook, E., Cullen, K., Zachos, K., McManus, S., Feder, G., Bellis, M., Maiden, N. Artificial intelligence in critical synthesis of public health responses to violence: A novel application to UK violence prevention policy. Science Direct (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-026-00272-2

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Exploring violence, inequality, and representation

Reflections from a guest lecture

By Hannah Manzur, VISION Research Fellow

At VISION, we work with a wide range of stakeholders engaged in tackling violence and inequalities in society, from police to specialist services to national policymakers. Yet, as well as established professionals, our work also engages with students and young people through placement programmes, participatory action research, and, critically, through teaching new generations of upcoming researchers, practitioners and policymakers.  

I had the pleasure of joining City St George’s Broken Britain module for undergraduate Sociology and Criminology students as a guest lecturer to share my research and experience on a topic that sits at the heart of my research and professional journey: the relationship between violence, inequality, and the social structures that sustain them. Before joining VISION, I worked as a Policy Advisor at the European Parliament, where I saw firsthand how political decisions, data classifications, and institutional blind spots can shape people’s life chances. Combined with my academic research and civil society work, my career journey has taught me the importance of building bridges and learning lessons from across research, policy, and practice spaces to examine social issues from multiple, interlocking perspectives. Those experiences continue to inform how I teach and think about inequalities and their impact on society today. 

Why Concepts Like Marginalisation and Intersectionality Matter 

I opened the session with a warm-up exercise introducing three foundational concepts: social marginalisation, intersectionality, and vulnerabilisation. These ideas help us understand why and how certain groups of people consistently find themselves pushed to the edges of society, excluded from rights, resources, and security.  

In my policy work, these dynamics were impossible to ignore. Decisions that look ‘neutral’ on paper often deepen existing inequalities when viewed through an intersectional lens. Understanding how race, gender, class, sexuality, and migration status interlock isn’t just theoretical—it’s essential for designing policies that do not unintentionally harm the very people they claim to support. By tracing the rich history of intersectionality and how it functions across the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels of society, students were encouraged to move past surface-level understandings of intersectionality as a buzzword and really engage with the complex ways violence is shaped by intersecting inequalities.  

Everyday Fear and the Unequal Distribution of Safety 

As well as focusing on physical violence, students engaged with wider experiences of violence, including those which directly affected them. One of the most engaging parts of the session involved asking students to reflect on their own relationship with fear and safety: 

  • How often does fear shape your everyday behaviour? 
  • Who feels protected, and by whom? 
  • And whose fears are dismissed or minimised? 

These questions were designed to bring abstract ideas of ‘fear’, ‘security’, and ‘inequality’ to life through student’s experiences navigating the world from their own individual positionalities. Bringing in key insights from my own research at VISION, we discussed the gaps and differences in how violence is understood and experienced from personal and policy perspectives. While working in Brussels, I learned how policymakers often speak about “security” in general terms, yet the lived reality of violence — and fear of violence — is anything but equally shared. Some communities experience over-policing while others receive under-protection; some voices are amplified, others silenced. Understanding this imbalance is crucial for building systems that genuinely keep people safe. 

The Problem of Representation: When Categories Don’t Fit 

From challenging perceptions of violence, we also delved into challenging understanding of ‘inequality’ and how categorising people into distinctive groups can distort our understanding of how different groups experience violence. Official classifications for data collection are often seen as a neutral, technical process. But so much is packed into these decisions. Categorising people, with all their nuance and diversity, into neat separate boxes may be important for creating useful statistics, but it can also create serious problems when these categories don’t reflect people’s lived realities. I displayed some of the categories commonly used in surveys and policy documents and asked students whether these labels reflect their identities or experiences. Students grappled with the contradictions and complexities of capturing inequalities, relating their own frustrations with being put in ‘the wrong box’ and how misrepresentation can carry serious consequences for people’s lived realities being visible and their future life chances. 

This is a conversation that deeply resonates with me. As both a researcher and policy advisory, I often struggled with how overly rigid or simplistic classifications erase nuance, flatten identities, and ultimately limit our ability to recognise and respond to inequality. Data shapes policy—but if the data categories themselves are flawed, so too are the decisions built upon them. Representation is not just symbolic. It determines who is seen, whose experiences are counted, and which forms of violence are acknowledged or ignored. 

Looking Ahead 

My goal in this lecture was not only to share academic insights, but to encourage students to question the systems around them—how they define people, whose realities they prioritise, and how they respond to social harm. Whether in policymaking or research, we cannot address violence and inequality without listening carefully to those who live at their intersections. Drawing on both my policymaking experience and new research findings from my work at VISION, I emphasised the importance of understanding how systems work from multiple perspectives, how cycles of exclusion and harm can feed into one another, and how areas of research, policy, and practice can work together to disrupt these cycles. Engaging with students through this Guest Lecture reminded me of the critical role of teaching in sharing knowledge, changing perspectives, and building critical tools for new generations to see and challenge cycles of inequalities and harm across their future careers and lived experiences.

For further information, please contact Hannah at hannah.manzur.4@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Photographs from Dr Hannah Manzur