VISION director Gene Feder draws on his experience of three decades of research into healthcare responses to domestic violence, highlighting mistakes made and lessons for better research.
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Small projects funded by the VISION consortium
We are pleased to announce the five successful proposals for the VISION Small Projects Fund.
Over 70 proposals were submitted to our call for projects that contribute to VISION objectives. This incredible number highlighted not only the strong interest there is in violence-related research, but also the urgent need for increased funding for this type of work.
It was a difficult selection process, and we were sorry that we could not fund more.
The successful projects were selected by a panel that included experts by experience, and representation from specialist services and a range of academic institutions from around the country. The final portfolio was selected to ensure some diversity of sectors, disciplines, methodologies, and regions.
Each project will enhance the VISION research and inform our work. We are excited to work with each of the Principal Investigators (PIs) and their partners.
- Changing Relations Community Interest Company (C.I.C), Weaving stories of peer sexual abuse, PI: Lisa C Davis
- Surviving Economic Abuse, A rapid impact survey to monitor the nature and prevalence of economic abuse in the UK, PI: Rosa Wilson-Garwood
- Anglia Ruskin University, ‘Nothing about us without us’: Investigating the impact of the leadership of ethnic minority women on domestic abuse service provision in East England, PI: Mirna Guha
- University of West London, Enhancing the wellbeing of victims of Hate Crimes who occupy multiple minority identities, PI: Maya Flax
- University of South Wales, Stalking and Young People in Wales: Exploring and increasing knowledge, awareness and understanding, PI: Sarah Wallace
For further information on the individual projects, please see the VISION Small Projects Fund webpage: Funded Small Projects – City Vision
Final reports from each of the projects will be published on the VISION website when available. We will also organise project presentations via the VISION and VASC Webinar Series and advertise the events on the VISION Publications, Events & News webpage.
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Book launch: The Ethics of Surveillance in Times of Emergency
This event is in the past.
The Ethics of Surveillance in Times of Emergency, edited by Kevin Macnish and Adam Henschke
Join us for the launch of this exciting, open-source, edited collection from Oxford University Press
29 April, Monday, 6 – 7:30 pm
The Pavilion (ground floor), University Building
City, University of London EC1V 0HB
How do we respond to emergencies in ways that are both consistent with democratic and community principles, and that are ethically justifiable? Emergencies place stress on existing infrastructure and communities, and put significant pressure on democratic decision-making. What have we learnt from pandemic surveillance about the challenge of acting in times of emergency? How can philosophy help us understand the ethics of public health surveillance technologies? When should we use surveillance to monitor public responses and protests to crises?
We will hear from the editors, authors, and selected discussants.
About the Editors:
- Kevin Macnish is Digital Ethics Consulting Senior Manager with Sopra Steria. He is a former analyst and manager at GCHQ and the US DOD, and an assistant professor at the universities of Leeds and Twente. Kevin has published academic articles, chapters, and books on ethics and technology. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Research Advisory Board
- Adam Henschke is an Assistant Professor with the Philosophy Section at the University of Twente. He works primarily in the ethics of technology, with much of his work focusing on security. He has written on the ethnics of surveillance, the internet of things, human military enhancement, and counter-terrorism. Recent publications include the co-edited books Counter-Terrorism, Ethics and Technology: Emerging Challenges at the Frontiers of Counter-Terrorism (2021) and The Palgrave Handbook of National Security (2021)
This book launch is sponsored by the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London
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Prevalence of physical violence against people in insecure migration status
VISION researchers from the Systematic Review working group (Andri Innes, Sophie Carlisle, Hannah Manzur, Elizabeth Cook, Jessica Corsi and Natalia Lewis) have published a systematic review and meta-analysis in PLOS One, estimating prevalence of physical violence against people in insecure migration status. This is the first review of its type, synthesizing global data on violence against migrants in all types of insecure status.
The review finds that around 1 in 3 migrants in insecure status experience physical violence. Violence included physical interpersonal, community and state violence. Insecure status was conceptualised encompassing undocumented status, lapsed statuses, asylum seeking and other pending applications, and any status that embeds a form of insecurity by tying status to a particular relationship (such as spousal or employer-employee). Studies were only included in the review if the violence happened while the victim was in insecure status.
The VISION team reviewed academic literature published between January 2000 and May 2023, across social and health sciences. The study was global in scope, although data was limited by the English language search.
Key Findings
More than one in four migrants in insecure status disclosed intimate partner violence specifically. Spousal visas embed a particular risk of violence because the visa status is connected to an intimate partner relationship, creating an important power disparity. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in prevalence of violence by gender across the dataset. Prevalence also did not differ meaningfully across geographic region, perpetrator, status type or time frame.
The most significant findings included that violence exposure is not meaningfully different for people in undocumented status than in other types of insecure status. Physical violence is a concern across all types of insecure migration status types.
The findings were limited because of high levels of heterogeneity in the data. It was also difficult to consider intersectional identity characteristics such as age, race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, marital status, socio-economic status, education level or motivation for migration because these were not standardised across included studies. This suggests that further and specified research is needed in this area.
The review is open access and is available to read in full here.
If you have any comments or feedback for the authors, please contact Andri at alexandria.innes@city.ac.uk
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Consultation: Is there a need for a VAWG data dashboard?
In 2022, the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) developed a prototype violence against women and girls (VAWG) dashboard. The tool presents statistics and charts on violence against women and girls in England and Wales, drawing on multiple sources. However, due to re-prioritisation at ONS, maintenance of the dashboard was halted and from 1st April 2024 it will no longer be accessible.
The VISION consortium is consulting on whether there is need for a VAWG data dashboard. This consultation is seeking views on:
- Whether the dashboard was useful
- Who used it and why
- If the dashboard was to continue, what aspects should be kept, dropped or added.
The consultation link is here: Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
Anyone interested in the idea of a VAWG data dashboard is welcome to respond to the survey, particularly if interested in using one in the future.
Answer as many questions as you like. You can provide contact details or complete this anonymously. The findings will be used to draft a report and provide recommendations on whether the dashboard should continue. The report will include a list of the groups and organisations that participated (where details are provided). Individuals will not be named, although quotes may be taken from the text provided. The report may be published, for example on the VISION website.
The ONS VAWG dashboard was available online until 31 March 2024. Therefore, if you would like to participate in this consultation, please view the sample screenshots of the tool below.
This consultation closes Monday 22 April.
For further information, please contact us at VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk
Call for Papers: Cyprus and the violence of bordering 50 years on
The island of Cyprus is known to most in Europe as a popular holiday destination; the violent history and the ongoing (if stable) conflict on the island is easily forgotten by tourists who enjoy the sunny beaches, the rich archaeological sites, and the club scene of Agia Napa. Yet for half a century Cyprus has remained divided. In August 1974 Turkish forces occupied the island and initiated a process of violent partition against the backdrop of two decades of conflict: first with the British in the fight for independence and then among Greek and Turkish ethnic groups trying to get a footing in national and municipal politics while hamstrung by an unworkable constitution
Cyprus is part of an archipelago of hybrid spaces in the eastern Mediterranean. Historically governed under Hellenic, Venetian, Byzantine and Ottoman rule, in 1878 the island was leased to Britain, and then formally annexed as a crown colony in 1914. The complex international and regional politics of decolonization laid the ground for the partition of the island. Since the 1950s the ‘Cyprus question’ has become a permanent fixture in international politics, and ever since multiple plans have been proposed for the ‘solution’ to the Cyprus question; those that have been implemented have failed to unify the communities and establish peace.
This workshop, Partitioning for Peace? Cyprus and the violence of bordering 50 years on, will bring together scholars from various disciplines and paradigms (politics, IR, history, literature, anthropology, media and communications, sociology, journalism, geography, migration studies, border studies, peace and conflict studies) to discuss new research on the past and present of the Cyprus question 50 years on from the events of 1974. We welcome applications from academics, early career scholars, policy professionals, and practitioners working in community-based initiatives.
We invite new work responding, but not limited, to the following questions:
- Where does the Cypriot experience sit in the context of the global history of territorial partitions?
- What is the dynamic relationship between emotion and territoriality that sustains conflict?
- In what ways does the partition keep peace on the island (and beyond) and in what ways does it sustain violence?
- How does population dislocation compromise prospects for a resolution?
- What is the logic of the solutions proposed by the international community and why have they failed?
The workshop will take the form of an in-person event on 7th – 8th of November 2024 at City, University of London, with paper presentations and discussion over one day, and a linked panel event.
Interested applicants should submit a 500-word abstract and a short 2-page CV in one document by 15 May 2024 to alexandria.innes@city.ac.uk and georgios.giannakopoulos@city.ac.uk with the subject line Partitioning Cyprus. A small amount of travel support will be available for early career researchers, please indicate if you would like to be considered for this support.
The successful applicants will be notified by 1 July 2024. Full drafts will be due by 16 October 2024 for circulation to workshop attendees.
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Better utilisation of healthcare data to measure violence
Despite violence being recognised as a harm to health, it is not consistently or adequately captured in healthcare data systems. Administrative health records could be a valuable source for researching violence and understanding the needs of victims, but such datasets are currently underutilised for this purpose.
VISION researcher Dr Anastasia Fadeeva, with input from Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, Professor Sally McManus and Public Health Wales’ Dr Alex Walker, examined violence indicators in emergency care, primary care, and linked healthcare datasets in the paper Using Primary Care and Emergency Department datasets for Researching Violence Victimisation in the UK.
Anastasia worked with Hospital Episode Statistics Accident and Emergency (HES A&E) and the Emergency Care Data Set (ECDS) while on secondment at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), with helpful review provided by researchers in the department.
Among the datasets reviewed in the study, the South Wales Violence Surveillance dataset (police and emergency department data linked by Public Health Wales) had the most detail about violent acts and their contexts, while the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) provided the more extensive range of socioeconomic factors about patients and extensive linkage with other datasets. Currently, detailed safeguarding information is routinely removed from the ECDS extracts provided to researchers, limiting its utility for violence research. In the HES A&E, only physical violence was consistently recorded.
Addressing these limitations and increasing awareness of the potential utility of health administrative datasets to violence-related research has the potential to provide insight into the health service needs of victims.
For further information please see: Social Sciences | Free Full-Text | Using Primary Care and Emergency Department Datasets for Researching Violence Victimisation in the UK: A Methodological Review of Four Sources (mdpi.com)
Or contact Dr Anastasia Fadeeva at anastasa.fadeeva@city.ac.uk
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VISION/VASC Webinar Series: IPV and the LGBTQI+ communities
This event is in the past.
We are pleased to announce the VISION and Violence & Society Centre (VASC) Webinar Series.
The purpose of the series is to provide a platform for academia, government and the voluntary and community sector that work to reduce and prevent violence to present their work / research to a wider audience. This is a multidisciplinary platform and we welcome speakers from across a variety of fields such as health, crime, policing, ethnicity, migration, sociology, social work, primary care, front line services, etc.
Our first webinar is Tuesday, 20 February 2024, 1300 – 1350. We welcome Dr Steven Maxwell, Research Associate in the School of Social & Environmental Sustainability and Associate in the School of Health and Wellbeing, at the University of Glasgow.
Steven will present his research on intimate partner violence within the LGBTQI+ communities. He is a former mental health nurse and completed his PhD in Global Public Health at University College London in 2021. Steven’s PhD explored HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis uptake/adherence among men who have sex with men who engaged in sexualised drug use. His current interest is researching health inequities/social justices across minority and deprived populations, particularly sexual & mental health, and related substance use.
To register for the event in order to receive the Teams invitation and / or if interested in presenting at a future Series, please contact: VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk
The VISION/VASC Webinar Series is sponsored by the UK Prevention and Research Partnership consortium, Violence, Health and Society (MR-V049879) and the Violence and Society Centre at City, University of London.
Event: Zero tolerance to female genital mutilation
This event is in the past.
The International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is 6 February every year. The United Nations Assembly designated the day with the aim to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of this practice.
In support to highlight the day and the horrific practice of FGM, IKWRO, a London-based human rights organisation for Middle Eastern, North African and Afghan women and girls living in the UK, is hosting Zero tolerance to female genital mutilation on 5 February 2024, 2 – 5 pm, in London at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA.
The event brings together experts and survivors to shed light on the challenges and gaps in safeguarding women and girls globally in the context of FGM:
- Payzee Mahmod, Campaign Manager at IKWRO
- Naana Otoo-Oyortey, Executive Director of FORWARD, an African diaspora women’s rights organisation in the UK
- Mama Sylla, an FGM survivor and chairwoman of La FRATERNITE UK, a London-based registered charity
- Shamsa Araweelo, an FGM survivor and social activist
- Janet Fyle, Royal College of Midwives’ (RCM) Professional Policy Advisor and a Cardiff University School of Policy Law accredited Expert Witness
- Jaswant Kaur Narwal, Chief Crown Prosecutor
- Aisha K. Gill, Ph.D., CBE is Professor of Criminology at University of Bristol
- Detective Superintendent Alex Castle, Metropolitan Police and Lead Responsible Officer for Harmful Practices and co-chair of the London Harmful Practice Working Group
Speakers and attendees will engage in discussions about the pressing issues surrounding FGM such as the challenges and barriers to disclosure, reporting and prosecution and explore ways to bridge the existing gaps through policy changes, community involvement and institutional improvements.
For further information on the free event and to register, please see: Zero Tolerance to FGM Conference
Or please contact VISION Senior Research Fellow, Dr Ladan Hashemi at: ladan.hashemi@city.ac.uk
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A health perspective to the war in Israel and Palestine
Gene Feder, VISION Director and Professor of Primary Care at the University of Bristol, has written an opinion piece with colleagues commenting on events in Israel and Gaza from a public health and primary care perspective. Responding to the war in Israel and Palestine was published in December in the online edition of the British Journal of General Practice.
Gene and his colleagues are GPs working to further the development of family medicine in the occupied Palestinian territory, specifically in the West Bank, but with links to family medicine in Gaza through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and through Medical Aid for Palestinians. They also have friends and family in Israel and Palestine.
They have three responses to the current crisis as informed by their work as GPs and connection to Palestinian primary care:
- A plea for the protection of health care and health professionals amid the war
- A plea for the preservation of public health amid war
- A recognition that in the aftermath of October 7th and the invasion of Gaza, the widespread direct and vicarious trauma in Israeli and Palestinian populations will result in permanent physical and emotional damage: the former in the shape of orthopaedic, neurological, and gynaecological (as a result of rape) harm, the latter in the form of widespread anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder which will also cascade down the generations.
Given VISION’s commitment to developing evidence on violence prevention, we will be organising roundtable meetings bringing together researchers focusing on post-conflict violence reduction. This is an opportunity for dialogue, perhaps leading to new perspectives and research including systematic assessment of sustainable post-conflict interventions as well as further joint activities.
For further information on the opinion piece, please see: Responding to the war in Israel and Palestine
Photograph by Emad El Byed on Unsplash
