Durham University’s Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse invites you to an online webinar looking at Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) commissioning.
The project team, Dr Elizabeth Cook (VISION Co-Investigator, City St George’s UoL), Dr James Rowlands (Durham University), and Dr Althea Cribb (Durham University) will share findings from a British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant funded research project into review notification and commissioning decision-making and identify implications for practice and policy.
This webinar will be of interest to stakeholders involved in reviews, including practitioners, commissioners, senior managers, policy makers, and researchers. Those affected by domestic homicides and abuse-related deaths, including family, are also welcome to join, as are family advocates.
Join us at this free online webinar on the 24th March between 1300 and 1430 to hear about the findings findings from this project.
Professor Vanessa Gash was an invited contributor on a recent panel on Barriers to Research on Sex and Gender at City, University, where she presented some of her work funded by VISION on workplace violence.
Workplace violence is often imagined as a rare or extreme event—yet for many employees, it forms part of a daily reality that remains unseen, unreported, and unmanaged. Evidence from recent reviews and representative UK data paints a troubling picture: violence, harassment, and bullying at work are both widespread and systematically minimised, particularly for groups already facing gendered or intersectional disadvantages.
One of the most striking patterns across studies is the silence of victims. Although around 8.3% of working‑age employees report threats, insults, or physical attacks at work, many more choose not to disclose their experiences. Research suggests a persistent “dark figure of crime,” with roughly 60% of crimes generally going unreported, and workplace violence likely exceeding this threshold. Victims often feel ashamed or fear appearing incompetent. At work—where reputational stakes are high and careers depend on social status—these concerns are intensified.
The Sullivan Review sheds further light on the issue by exploring barriers to research within academia itself. Alarmingly, bullying, harassment, and ostracisation emerged as the second most commonly cited barrier, reported by 42% of respondents. The sample was disproportionately composed of colleagues with protected characteristics—women, LGBTQ+ individuals, older staff, and those with disabilities. These groups are historically more vulnerable to exclusionary practices, and their experiences offer insight into how violence and inequality become mutually reinforcing.
A recurring theme across sectors—from nursing to higher education, hospitality, and even commercial kitchens—is managerial normalisation of violence. Studies show that managers may dismiss or downplay workers’ reports, frame violent incidents as interpersonal misunderstandings, or subtly blame victims for “mismanaging” interactions. Such responses erode trust and suppress reporting. Without acknowledgement from leadership, workplace violence becomes embedded in organisational culture, shielded by institutional inertia.
Gender inequalities intersect heavily with these processes. Women and gender‑diverse workers often face disproportionate scrutiny and are more likely to internalise blame for mistreatment. In environments where masculinity norms dominate—whether through expectations of resilience, emotional restraint, or competitiveness—experiences of violence can be viewed as a failure to cope rather than an organisational problem requiring intervention.
The consequences are not merely cultural or professional—they are clinical. Evidence from the UK Household Longitudinal Study indicates that workplace violence is predictive of common mental disorders (CMDs) both at baseline and one year later, suggesting a causal pathway. Mental health harms linger long after individual incidents fade.
To break this cycle, organisations need scientifically designed interventions that include ongoing measurement, enforce accountability, and centre the voices of both workers and management. Most importantly, institutions must confront the gendered dynamics of silence, shame, and managerial denial that allow violence to persist.
The research team led by Dr Nabihah Rafi (Kings College London) included VISION researchers Professor Robert Stewart and Dr Vishal Bhavsar. They examined the association of violence exposure, such as being physically assaulted, with general and cause-specific mortality in a population using mental health services.
Assembling a cohort study using electronic health records from a mental health and substance use treatment provider in south-east London, records were linked to acute medical admission and emergency department presentation data, as well as to a national mortality register with death certificates for deaths registered in England and Wales.
Results indicated that exposure to violence among users of mental health services is associated with increased mortality compared with non-exposed individuals. They may have worse physical health for a range of reasons, such as the metabolic effects of psychiatric treatment, which in turn might influence cause-specific mortality risk (e.g. diabetes-related mortality). Violence exposure, including repeated exposure, might influence mortality risk through a reduced capability to manage existing physical illness, increasing the risk of progression of pre-existing morbidity.
Further findings about the association between those using mental health services and being exposed to violence also suggest:
Psychological stress that could, over time, cause stress to body systems
An increase in unhealthy behaviours, including alcohol use and smoking, which are important drivers of mortality in people with mental illness
An indication with relationship stress, which some evidence suggests may affect mortality risk
An Influence of mortality risk through a reduced capability to manage existing physical illness, increasing the risk of disease progression.
Recommendations
The association between violence exposure and mortality from natural causes in people with mental illness warrants further research attention to understand the contributory pathways, including through shared causes of both violence exposure and mortality.
Strategies to improve the identification and assessment of violence exposure in people with mental illness could improve the quality of care by reducing health inequalities, as well as by uncovering wider healthcare needs in patients exposed to violence.
To cite: Rafi N, Stewart R, Jewell A, Shetty H, Bhavsar V. The association between violence exposure and general and cause-specific mortality in people using mental health services: cohort study. BJPsych Open. 2026 Jan 12;12(1):e35. doi: 10.1192/bjo.2025.10938. PMID: 41521785.
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
This event is in the past.
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.’
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
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:
The violence affecting young people takes many forms and is often complex in nature.
Youth organisations provide unique spaces where young people can feel safe and build belonging.
When youth practitioners can build trust with young people, they are able to provide them with practical and emotional support to navigate violence.
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.
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.
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.
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
Support and invest in long-term collaborative partnerships and policy initiatives which take account of the spatial discrepancies within cities.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Opportunity to present at ‘The Intersection of Public Health and Violence Prevention’ conference in 2026
The call is now closed.
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:
Exploring or addressing the structural determinants of violence through a public health lens, with a focus on research, policy or partnerships
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
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
When we began recording thePartitioning for Peacepodcastwe 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 AndrekosVarnavas and Beyza Kiziltepe.
