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Webinar: Risk of sexual violence along migration routes and the implications for current asylum policy in the UK and Europe

 

Sexual violence along migration routes: A systematic review and synthesis

Thursday 29 January 2026, 2  – 3 pm, online

Email VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk to register for the Teams link

VISION Co-Investigator, Dr Alexandria (Andri) Innes and PhD student Merili Pullerits will outline how sexual violence is a pervasive and structurally embedded feature of undocumented migration journeys. It is often associated with economic status, and economic need or destitution and often expected along the routes. Some migrants who plan to travel without documents take action to prevent unwanted pregnancy before travelling, or seek protection by travelling in mixed sex groups or in couples of convenience. 

This review found that some routes situate sexual violence in an intense climate of violence and brutality, and at times sexual violence victimisation is considered to be the only available way to prevent deportation or death. Many irregular migration journeys take place in hostile landscapes where guides such as smugglers and traffickers are the only means of transport, and refusing sexual contact would result in abandonment and death. 

The worst forms of sexual violence are brutal and indiscriminate, involve forced witnessing, and forced sex act perpetration on other migrants. It is used against men, women, trans and non-binary migrants, but there are important gendered differences in the portray of sexual violence and the expectation of sexual violence before and during a migration journey. 

Finally, Andri and Merili will highlight how sexual violence along migration routes are executed by various types of perpetrators, including organised and systematic perpetration by state agents such as border guards and police, and by smuggling and trafficking gangs. It is also carried out by opportunists who are often migrants travelling the irregular route, or are people who reside along the route and take advantage of the vulnerable populations transiting through.

There is very little, if any, form of accountability for perpetrators and very little protection from violence available to migrants. There is also no protection offered by receiving countries to prevent removal directly into contact with perpetrators along migration routes in locations that are often considered ‘safe third countries.’ 

To register and receive the Teams link, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

 

 

“How are young people supposed to stay safe when we have nowhere safe to go?”

 

VISION was pleased to support the Lambeth Peer Action Collective (LPAC) with funding and mentoring in their recent project, Built on Trust: The role of youth spaces and trusted adults in reducing young people’s exposure to violence. Working at the community level and with young adults was inspiring – and the impact was powerful particularly for Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Cook, Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa and Dr Alexandria (Andri) Innes, the mentors. Many congratulations to High Trees, LPAC and their partners for the hard work and brilliant report. Please read the blog below, written by the young adults who conducted the research and wrote and delivered their report which can also be found below. They are an amazing group!

 

“How are young people supposed to stay safe when we have nowhere safe to go?”

 

by Anisa Hassan on behalf of the Lambeth Peer Action Collective

 

The Lambeth Peer Action Collective (LPAC) recently published their newest research Built on Trust: The role of youth spaces and trusted adults in reducing young people’s exposure to violence. LPAC was launched by High Trees Community Development Trust in 2021. It’s made up of young people and six local youth organisations working together to create better futures for young people in Lambeth through youth-led research and social action.

What was the research about?

This round of research explored what can be done to reduce young people’s risk of experiencing violence. With the support of High Trees, VISION, Partisan and other LPAC partners, we worked on this project for nearly 18 months, conducting and analysing 46 peer interviews. We found that with access to trusted adults and trusted spaces young people were less likely to be exposed to different types of violence.

This produced four key findings:

  1. The violence affecting young people takes many forms and is often complex in nature.
  2. Youth organisations provide unique spaces where young people can feel safe and build belonging.
  3. When youth practitioners can build trust with young people, they are able to provide them with practical and emotional support to navigate violence.
  4. Youth organisations offer young people alternative pathways and visions for their future.

An afternoon of conversation and community

The launch event was a chance for the LPAC team to connect and show stakeholders and community members our research, get feedback and start to think about how we can work together to make change. Attendees described the event as “hopeful”, “inspiring”, and “empowering”, with many of them pledging support. The team left the event with hope for the next phase of the project – social action that builds long-lasting change for young people in our communities.

What’s next?

“No research without action”

Since the research launch in October, the LPAC team have been busy, taking action in response to our findings.

We were invited to the Lambeth Safeguarding Children Partnership’s Annual Conference to present our research findings to organisations at the forefront of protecting young people. This event gave us an opportunity to highlight key insights from our research and how they can shape safeguarding practices and policies.

We have also been designing our own trusted adult training workshop, which takes inspiration from interviews with young people focusing on characteristics and practical advice that youth practitioners can use to build and maintain trust. We are planning to trial the training with local youth workers early next year.

LPAC team members have also attended workshops hosted by the Met Police and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), where we had the opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions about their MPS Children’s Strategy based on young pe  ople’s experiences that they told us about through our research.

LPAC at High Trees were thrilled to win the Power of Community award at the Locality Awards 2025 in Liverpool. The award celebrates community organisations working with local people to shape their own future and to build a fairer society where everyone in the community thrives.

We are also proud to announce that in the new year LPAC will be starting a new round of research, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund, focusing on mental health support for young people affected by violence, and we are excited to continue our collaboration with VISION on this project.

If you’re interested in finding out more about LPAC’s work visit www.lambethpac.com  or get in touch with us on action@high-trees.org.

Photographs provided by LPAC.

Re-imagining responses to gender-based violence

 

Dr Olumide Adisa

VISION Co-Investigator, Dr Olumide Adisa, has written a personal blog, Behind the book, highlighting her journey behind the scenes writing, compiling, and publishing her first edited book, Tackling Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence: A Systems Approach.

In the blog, Olumide discusses her drive to have a meaningful impact in the fight against gender-based violence. Her enthusiasm, advocacy and growing expertise for systems theory and complex systems approaches combined with ongoing work across different systems and with various collaborators led to the project and was an invaluable experience.

For further information, please contact Olumide at olumide.adisa@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Frontline practitioner’s understanding of the roots of violence, and why it matters for policy and prevention

Violence continues to be a concern for policymakers and communities, notably so in urban contexts in which socio-demographic change, retrenched social support and evolving forms of exclusion affect its distribution and intensity. While many European cities experience relatively low levels of violence, the caveat to this is that many sub-areas and specific communities experience considerable variations in the form and intensity of such violence.

In this paper, Violence reduction in a changing European urban context: Frontline practitioner’s understanding of the roots of violence, and why it matters for policy and prevention, the research team, including VISION Co-Investigator Dr Elizabeth Cook, present findings from a comparative, qualitative study investigating how key stakeholders – civic and policy actors working at the interface of violence prevention and European urban communities – perceive its cause and overall nature.

Lizzie and colleagues explored the accounts of key support workers, practitioners and local policymakers because they represent essential intermediaries in processes of policy implementation, transfer and reform. The perspectives of practitioners provide insight into how social problems are constructed and under what conditions, which groups are most affected by these conditions, how solutions to such problems should be delivered in city settings (and delivered more effectively) and who should be assigned responsibility for generating effective responses. 

Informed by scholarship on street-level bureaucracy and local knowledge, the paper presents accounts that connect the risk of violence with austerity conditions and their erosion of vital social and institutional fabrics, which thereby worsening localised violence in these ‘ordinary’ cities.

The research team identified the key operating theories, ideas and observations circulating among civic actors tasked with tackling urban violence. Local practitioners understand violence to be linked to macro-economic conditions and social inequalities that sit outside their jurisdiction, but which ultimately present major challenges to the fabric of local urban life and risks to particular communities. Their commentaries build a cumulative picture that is in many ways at odds with the main thrust of many of the policies, political discussions, policing priorities and resource cuts evident in many cities across Europe in recent years.

The strongest shared conclusion is that urban violence cannot be tackled where these deeper conditions, influences and a lack of resources remain unaddressed.

Recommendations

  1. Support and invest in long-term collaborative partnerships and policy initiatives which take account of the spatial discrepancies within cities.
  2. Encourage connections between civic and state authorities which could help to relieve these frustrations, rebalance power relations and provide accountability in top-down approaches to cities experiencing destructive social, political and economic change.
  3. To increase trust in political institutions, policies must also tackle the scarcity of investment in public services, while encouraging better representation of marginalised communities in decision-making processes.

To cite: Cook, E. A., Jankowitz, S., & Atkinson, R. (2025). Violence reduction in a changing European urban context: Frontline practitioner’s understanding of the roots of violence, and why it matters for policy and prevention. European Urban and Regional Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764251386774

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

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Conference: The intersection of public health & violence prevention

 

Wednesday 4 February 2026, 10 am – 4:30 pm, Leonardo Hotel, Cardiff, CF10 3UD

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

The UKPRP VISION research consortium and the Violence Prevention team at Public Health Wales are pleased to collaborate on a free, one-day conference, The intersection of public health and violence prevention.

This event will bring together a range of stakeholders working in violence prevention including public health, policing, healthcare, academia, government and the community and voluntary sector. It will showcase professionals from across Wales and beyond who are working at this intersection, with a focus on whole system approaches to violence prevention and the role of public health within this, as well as examining data on violence and its links with health inequalities. Join us for presentations, panel discussions and plenty of opportunities for questions and networking. 

For any questions, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

We look forward to seeing you in Cardiff soon! Violence Prevention Team and VISION Consortium

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COFRESTRU AR AGOR NAWR: Y Croestoriad rhwng Iechyd y Cyhoedd ac Atal Trais

Rydym wrth ein bodd yn eich gwahodd i gynhadledd Croestoriad rhwng Iechyd y Cyhoedd ac Atal Trais, a gynhelir ar y cyd gan Gonsortiwm Trais, Iechyd a Chymdeithas (VISION) Partneriaeth Ymchwil Atal y DU a’r Tîm Atal Trais yn Iechyd Cyhoeddus Cymru.

Pryd: Dydd Mercher 4 Chwefror 2026 10:00am – 4:30pm

Ble: Gwesty Leonardo, Caerdydd, CF10 3UD

COFRESTRWCH YMA

Bydd y gynhadledd undydd, rhad ac am ddim hon yn dwyn ynghyd amrywiaeth o randdeiliaid sy’n gweithio ym maes atal trais gan gynnwys iechyd y cyhoedd, plismona, gofal iechyd, y byd academaidd, y llywodraeth a’r sector cymunedol a gwirfoddol. Bydd yn arddangos gweithwyr proffesiynol o bob cwr o Gymru a thu hwnt sy’n gweithio yn y groesffordd hon, gyda ffocws ar ddulliau system gyfan o atal trais a rôl iechyd y cyhoedd yn hyn, yn ogystal ag archwilio data ar drais a’r cysylltiad rhyngddo ag anghydraddoldebau iechyd.

Ymunwch â ni am gyflwyniadau, trafodaethau panel a digon o gyfleoedd ar gyfer gofyn cwestiynau a rhwydweithio.

Edrychwn ymlaen at eich croesawu ar 4 Chwefror. Anfonwch e-bost at phw.violencepreventionteam@wales.nhs.uk os oes gennych gwestiynau.

COFRESTRWCH YMA

Edrychwn ymlaen at eich gweld yng Nghaerdydd yn fuan! Tîm Atal Trais a Chonsortiwm VISION

Call for Abstracts: The intersection of public health and violence prevention

 

Opportunity to present at
‘The Intersection of Public Health and Violence Prevention’ conference in 2026

The VISION research consortium and the Violence Prevention Team at Public Health Wales are pleased to collaborate on a free, one-day conference. The theme is the intersection of public health and violence prevention in February 2026.

Bringing together a range of stakeholders working in violence prevention including public health, policing, healthcare, academia, government and the community and voluntary sector, we are keen to showcase academics and public health professionals from Wales and beyond who are working at this intersection.

We are currently designing the agenda and are looking for additional participation along these themes:

  1. Exploring or addressing the structural determinants of violence through a public health lens, with a focus on research, policy or partnerships
  2. Sharing innovative, evidence-based practice by highlighting approaches, cross-sector collaboration, or lessons learned that can inform practice, policy, or future research in violence prevention
  3. Exploring the role of lived experience in research and ethical considerations.

Presenters will have a maximum of 20 minutes to present, including time for questions or discussion. We welcome interactive presentations or workshops.

Presentation summaries must be a maximum of 300 words and are due by 17 December at 5 pm. Please email Word documents and any questions to PHW.Violencepreventionteam@wales.nhs.uk

Registration will be open soon and announced on this webpage, via networks, and on the VISION LinkedIn page.  For any questions about registration, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Partitioning for Peace: The violence of bordering on the island of Cyprus

by Georgios Giannakopoulos and Alexandria Innes 

When we began recording the Partitioning for Peace podcast we imagined the series as a companion to our Partitioning for Peace  conference that took place in November 2024 — a way to bring the discussion on Cyprus’s division beyond the confines of academic panels. What unfolded was far richer: an ongoing education in how history, memory, and everyday life intertwine across the island’s enduring line. 

We brought together researchers from across Europe who were working on Cyprus from a host of different disciplines: history, politics, anthropology, sociology, peace and conflict studies. We included, notably, Cypriot researchers who shared perspectives and reflections from their own personal experiential investment in the project spanning the partition historically and geographically. Each conversation reminded us that partition is not a single event but a condition that organizes time, space, and identity. In the first episode, our guests traced how the roots of 1974 stretch deep into the early twentieth century, while also showing how the memory of that moment differs across generations. Later we learned to listen to the material world—wardrobes, washing machines, and water pipes—as archives of emotion and governance. What seemed like a story of political geography gradually revealed itself as one about people’s improvisations under constraint. 

We also discovered the significance of the diaspora as a space of experimentation. From London to Melbourne, Cypriots have long practised forms of coexistence that elude formal politics at home. The podcasts confirmed that peace can be rehearsed in exile: in parish halls, cafés, and shared neighbourhoods where the absence of a physical border allows new relationships to form. 

Reflections on violence and the various and complex ways the violence of partition in Cyprus is perceived – in memory, across generations, and in the apparent absence of physical violence during the protracted stalemate of partition – were central to the themes of the podcast. Intergenerational trauma, but also the different ways this trauma might be narrativized and processed, was brought to the fore. 

Recording the series during the fiftieth anniversary of partition added urgency to our reflections. Our guests spoke candidly about fatigue—the risk that the “comfortable conflict,” as one called it, becomes a way of life. Yet we also encountered hope in younger voices who approach Cyprus’s future not through nostalgia but through pragmatic curiosity. Their vision is less about erasing the line than about re-centering it: turning the border itself into a site of dialogue. 

If the podcast offered us anything, it was the conviction that research, storytelling, and listening are political acts. The conversations we recorded were only a beginning; the work of unlearning and re-imagining continues.

Episode 1 of Partitioning for Peace is now available at The Lausanne Project, Partitioning for Peace, and features guests Professor Andrekos Varnavas and Beyza Kiziltepe. 

For further information, please contact Andri at alexandria.innes@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Medicine’s reckoning with genocide and crimes against humanity

Gene Feder, Professor of Primary Healthcare and VISION Director, has written an opinion piece with colleagues stating that accountability for human rights must guide every collaboration in medicine and science.

In their BMJ publication, Medicine’s reckoning with genocide and crimes against humanity, the authors build the case that in the nearly eight decades after the Genocide Convention in 1948, prevention has advanced in principle but faltered in practice. Many states remain indifferent, but medicine must not. Beginning with genocide, medical and academic leaders have a duty to implement reforms to safeguard the line between valuable collaboration and toxic complicity, break institutional silence, and declare medicine’s commitment to the right to existence and life for all peoples, in all states.

For further information: Please contact Gene at gene.feder@bristol.ac.uk

To cite: Minhas R, Shellah D, Maynard N, Goodwin-Gill G, Chalmers I, Feder G et al. Medicine’s reckoning with genocide and crimes against humanity BMJ 2025; 391 :r2277 doi:10.1136/bmj.r2277

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Practitioner in Residence: Navigating complex cases in Domestic Abuse-Related Death reviews

 

Danielle Sharp is the founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Safer Society, an organisation dedicated to supporting services in designing evidence-based responses to reduce violence, abuse, and harm. Through the Centre, Danielle conducts service evaluations, develops impact-driven strategies for organisations working to end violence and abuse, and serves as an Independent Chair for statutory Domestic Abuse-Related Death reviews – work that brings her face-to-face with the families of those who have been killed or died by suicide.

For most of her career, Danielle has worked in the domestic abuse and violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector. She began in frontline roles supporting young people and families before moving into strategic positions developing and commissioning evidence-based local responses to domestic abuse. Her work then expanded to national level at SafeLives, where as Head of the Knowledge Hub she led projects such as the Home Office One Front Door pilot, and Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) national oversight.

It is through her work as an Independent Chair for Domestic Abuse-Related Death reviews that Danielle identified the practice challenge that will form the focus of her Practitioner in Residence (PiR) research at the Violence and Society Centre (VASC). In several reviews, a recurring issue has emerged: cases where practitioners identify ‘bi-directional violence’ or ‘dual-allegations’ between individuals. This creates significant difficulties in accurately assessing risk, determining whether there is a primary victim and primary perpetrator, and making informed safeguarding decisions.

While some valuable resources exist, such as Michael Johnson’s domestic abuse typologies and the Respect practice toolkit for identifying primary victims and perpetrators, these tools are not yet consistently embedded across all agencies responding to domestic abuse. Particularly within policing and social care, practitioners often lack accessible, practical guidance to navigate these complex cases with confidence.

With the support of VISION Co-Investigator and Senior Lecturer Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Cook, Danielle’s focus in the PiR programme will be to bridge the gap between research and practice by developing practical resources for professionals. These tools will equip practitioners with greater clarity and confidence when navigating cases involving dual-reports, ultimately improving risk assessment and decision-making.

For further information, please contact Lizzie at elizabeth.cook@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Impact of consecutive COVID-19 lockdowns on GP referrals of women experiencing domestic abuse in England and Wales

To curb COVID-19, three periods of severe physical distancing measures (‘lockdowns’) were imposed by the Government throughout 2020 and 2021 in England and Wales: between 23 March and 1 June 2020 (68 days), 5 November 2020 and 2 December 2020 (27 days) and between 6 January and 8 March 2021 (61 days). These lockdowns resulted in societal changes, including full or part-time school and workplace closures, and reduced community mixing.

The pandemic also necessitated a change in clinical consultations in primary care, with a shift from predominantly face-to-face to mostly remote consultations (telephone, digital and video), complicating the provision of care and support, including safeguarding. The lockdowns made it harder for people to disclose domestic violence and abuse (DVA) to health professionals, as online consultations can form barriers to support.

Long and enforced lockdowns can make it harder to disclose DVA and can have a detrimental impact on DVA victim-survivors and their families. Previous studies suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns have led to an increase in DVA incidence. Refuge, the organisation running the 24-hour national DVA helpline in England, reported that calls surged by 60% during 2020 compared with the previous year. There is, however, scarce evidence on the impact of consecutive lockdowns over a period of almost 2 years on referrals from primary care to DVA support services in England.

The research team, led by Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths and others including VISION researchers Professor Gene Feder and Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, evaluated the impact of the three successive national lockdowns on the referrals from general practice (GP) to the Identification and Referral to Improve Safety DVA services. Their study, Interrupted time series and non-linear regression analyses to evaluate the impact of the three consecutive COVID-19 national lockdowns on the general practice referrals of women experiencing domestic violence and abuse in England and Wales, is the first to evaluate the continual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the three consecutive national lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 on DVA referrals. The researchers also explored the relationship between stringency of lockdowns and number of DVA referrals.

Anonymised data on daily referrals, interrupted-time series and non-linear regression quantified the impact of the three national lockdowns over 2020 and 2021 comparing analogous periods in the 2 years before and after, reporting incidence rate ratios, 95% Confidence Intervals and p values. Time spent at home and workplace visits over the lockdown periods were quantified as proxies for the stringency of the different lockdowns.

The first national lockdown in early 2020 led to a reduced number of referrals to DVA services. Over the second and the third lockdown, there was a possible increase in the number of referrals. The first national lockdown was more stringent (58% decline in workplace visits; 22% increase in time spent at home) than the second (34% decline in workplace visits; 14% increase in time spent at home) or the third (18% decline in workplace visits; 18% increase in time spent at home).

Increased freedom of movement alongside easier access to GP services during the two latter, less stringent, lockdowns compared with the first, stringent, lockdown could have contributed to the different trends in referrals. The research team determined that ensuring access to primary care and adequate and continuing provision of specialist support for people experiencing DVA is important during national emergencies. Further research, coproduced with DVA survivors and DVA agencies, is necessary to establish and evaluate the most appropriate support during both potential future national lockdowns and other systemic closures (eg, school holidays).

Recommendation

More stringent systemic closures will lead to a reduced number of referrals to a specialist DVA programme, while more relaxed system closures may result in increased referrals. This highlights the importance of ensuring adequate access to support, such as primary care, where people can safely disclose DVA and be referred to service providers during system closures, regardless of the stringency.

For further information: Please contact Jasmina at jasmina.panovska-griffiths@queens.ox.ac.uk

To cite: Panovska-Griffiths J, Szilassy E, Downes L, Dixon S, Dowrick A, Griffiths C, Feder G, Capelas Barbosa E. Interrupted time series and non-linear regression analyses to evaluate the impact of the three consecutive COVID-19 national lockdowns on the general practice referrals of women experiencing domestic violence and abuse in England and Wales. BMJ Public Health. 2025;3:e002408. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjph-2024-002408

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