Ruth's research focuses on gender-based violence and feminist activism and spans Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies. Current work examines digital gender-sexual violations, with a particular focus on upskirting and online abuse against feminists, and sexual harassment in the night-time economy. Recent work has focused on gender-based violence in universities and activism about it; how do we transform university environments, rather than just reforming them? Earlier research examined feminist activism and identity among students, legal responses to domestic violence, including perpetrators’ programmes, and a sociological examination of homicide.
A key reason for social changes around gender-based violence is the activism that generations of women have engaged in to change society. Throughout her career Ruth has been involved in feminist activism and networks of various kinds, in and beyond universities. This has included helping to run domestic violence organisations, campaign for services and policy changes, organise conferences for practitioners, scholars and activists, raise awareness of the achievements of previous campaigners, and design and manage training about dealing with sexual violence.
Ruth is the co-lead the Gendered Violene and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Theme (IDRT) which provides an intellectual home for the many colleagues across the university with research expertise in these areas.
Kayliegh Richardson is an Associate Professor and Head of Apprenticeships for Law at Northumbria University. Kayliegh is also a family law solicitor. Kayliegh’s practice experience includes representing private individuals in both injunction and private children proceedings where there has been domestic abuse within their family relationships. Kayliegh’s academic research investigates access to justice barriers for survivors of domestic abuse, with a focus on the family justice system. She is particularly interested in the impact of funding cuts on the family court process and the experiences of unrepresented parties in proceedings. Kayliegh is passionate about co-producing research directly with survivors to ensure that their voices are heard.
Kayliegh co-leads the Gendered Violence and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Theme at Northumbria University, which brings together scholars, policy-makers, practitioners and activists, having previously led the Gender Violence and Abuse Research Network and the Family Justice Research Interest Group. Kayliegh sits on the Learning and Development Subgroup of the Northumbria and North Durham Local Family Justice Board, as well as the Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board for Northumbria Police.
Angelika is an interdisciplinary researcher, exploring ways in which participatory research can bring about meaningful change with and for people in difficult life situations. Angelika's research is inspired by feminist participatory action research, participatory creative practice, and hopeful engagements with theory and our world. While her writing can sometimes be quite theoretical, Angelika's research is often collaborative and in-the-world, engaging people at all stages of the research process to engender change towards more just worlds. Angelika's works across boundaries, bringing together disparate groups to engage in creative endeavours that promote personal wellbeing, inter- and intra-community solidarity, and systems change. As part of this work, she is a founding co-leader of the Design Feminisms Research Group and the Gendered Violence and Abuse IDRT.
Rima's research focuses on social justice, with two specific branches. Firstly, work on equality, diversity and inclusion implementation and challenges, which ties in with her faculty roles in the university and work on Athena Swan and the Race Equality Charter. Secondly, Rima's research centres the voice of domestic abuse survivors and puts a spotlight on their experiences within the family justice system. Rima leads two projects that are developing interventions to minimise harm and better support survivors, using partnership working and bringing stakeholders within the justice system together to effect change. Impact for survivors is Rima's highest priority within these projects, having been in the family courts herself and knowing the very real trauma survivors face.
Jennifer Aston is an Associate Professor in Law and an Associate Member of the Centre for Workforce Futures at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research interests include the interaction between gender and legal and financial institutions, and she has published widely on gender, entrepreneurship, bankruptcy, and the law in the long nineteenth century.
Aston is currently PI on the ESRC-funded project A New Methodological Approach to the History of Divorce, 1857-1923 which employs a new, multidisciplinary methodology that combines mixed-method historical approaches with feminist legal theory and digital humanities to address 4 key research strands (a) History of divorce and domestic abuse; (b) Economic cost of divorce; (c) Child custody and mediation; and (d) Development of the family law profession. Working with project partners CAFCASS, Women’s Aid, and The National Archives, this project aims to connect the early history of the modern Divorce Court with contemporary policy issues.
Vanessa’s main research focus is embedding understandings of domestic abuse, particularly coercive control, in the criminal law and criminal justice system. As an academic lawyer she uses doctrinal, socio-legal and comparative approaches in her work. Her work is aligned with the Gender Violence and Abuse IDRT, where she sits on the Management Board, and she has collaborated with external organisations and academics in relation to interdisciplinary projects in the field of domestic violence and abuse. Vanessa has provided written evidence to the parliaments of Westminster and Scotland during the debates for legal reform introducing coercive control offences and she is now exploring the challenges of accessing defences by coerced and controlled victims who commit crimes either against their abusers or because of their abusers. To explore the range of Vanessa’s publications please follow the link to her PURE profile.
Dr. Hetu is a recipient of Government of India Fellowship Scheme for Doctoral Work in Criminology and Police Science from Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D). She has also qualified UGC-NET for Lectureship in 2005. Dr. Hetu was awarded diploma in the Asian Post Graduate Course on ‘Victimology & Victim Assistance’ conducted by World Society of Victimology (WSV) & Tokiwa International Victimology Institute in August, 2008 at Mito, Japan. She has a M.A. in Criminology with specialization in Human Rights from LNJN NICFS, MHA, Delhi.
Dr. Hetu has won Gold Medal in the category of young scientist for the best scientific paper on the 'Effect of Meditation on the Psyche of Inmates' presented at XXIX All India Criminology Conference held at Madurai. She was invited for a talk on Victim Assistance Programmes: Suggestion, Prevention and Challenges in Ancillary Meeting on Acid Attack on Females at Thirteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held at Doha, Qatar, from 12th-19th April, 2015. Her first book titled “Victims of Rape: Rights, Expectations and Restoration” is published by Thomson Reuters in 2018.
Adam Jackson is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Department at Northumbria Law School. Adam is a non-practising Barrister who teaches and researches in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence.
Adam’s current research includes work on sexual behaviour evidence (so called “rape shield” legislation) in sexual offence proceedings and cybercrime, specifically digital evidence and policing online environments (including anonymised communication networks such as the darkweb). Adam is a convenor of the Policing in the Digital Society Research Network which brings together colleagues from the Nordic region, Europe and the United Kingdom to research cyber-related policing and criminal justice issues.
Cassandra is a Lecturer in Criminology at Northumbria University. Her research focuses on gender-based violence, utilising qualitative and quantitative methods to expand theoretical understandings and deepen insights into lived experiences. There are three strands to her current work. One examines the music industry as a workplace, challenging assumptions that the music industry is free from gender-based violence. She spoke at the Women and Equalities’ Committee about her unprecedented work on the extent of sexual harassment and bullying and its gendered impact on women, especially those with intersectional identities. Another strand looks at the continuum of sexual violence university staff and students are subjected to and its impact on individuals and university communities. The last strand explores young men’s backlash to feminist prevention work; this strand will use arts-based methods to unravel how gender-based violence information (e.g. statistics on perpetrators and victim-survivors) can be presented without eliciting a defensive reaction.
Charlotte has a background in criminology, where she researched the impact of community penalties on criminalised people’s behaviour. She became dismayed at the deficits model of this work, and after seeing a talk on the historical social impact of quilt making started to consider whether, how and why people made creative things while being managed, punished and rehabilitated in criminal justice systems. She moved from evaluating how making might change people’s behaviour and sense of self, to using making while having difficult conversations with women about the harm done to them by others. Through her current research, Charlotte explores the ethics and aesthetics of care in the inherently uncaring criminal justice timespace, through women’s making, narratives, lived experiences and understanding of crime and harm, leisure and community (re)belonging. She uses participatory textile and mixed-media making as research methodologies and documents the practicalities of craft making inside the criminal justice system.
Claire Bessant is an Associate Professor in the Law School at Northumbria University, where she is also PGR lead and Ethics Lead for Law. Claire practiced as a family law solicitor before joining Northumbria in 2002. Since joining Northumbria, Claire has taught both family law and childcare law and supervises undergraduate dissertations and postgraduate students studying family law. Claire has been writing on the topic of domestic abuse for more than twenty years, with a particular interest being the state’s duty to protect victims of domestic abuse and the role of protective orders such as non-molestation and domestic abuse protection orders. Much of Claire's recent research explores the notion of family privacy; family privacy ideology can broadly be understood to afford the family with protection from the unjustified intervention of state, and society. This research on family privacy underpins current work exploring educators' understanding of the legal obligations which apply where girls are at risk of/have suffered female genital mutilation. Claire is a member of the Gendered Violence and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Theme Management Group at Northumbria University. Claire is an elected member of the Society of Legal Scholars Executive Committee and a member of the Socio-Legal Studies Association.
Clare is an interdisciplinary scholar who uses qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory design methodologies to examine the societal and policy implications of various forms of gender-based violence. Her current projects focus on the vulnerabilities emerging from the digitisation of financial services for victim-survivors of domestic abuse, with a particular focus on coerced debt and banking services. Previous projects have focused on trauma-informed lawyering in the context of civil claims for sexual violence; the online abuse of feminists; and women’s experiences of subterranean public space. Clare has used her research to lobby the UN CEDAW Committee, to advise the Police and Crime Commissioners’ regional VAWG strategy in North-East England, and to influence policy and practice in the financial services sector. She is the Sociology pathway lead for NINEDTP, and Chair of the British Society of Criminology’s North-East Regional Group.
I am an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminology at the Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, UK. I am an interdisciplinary scholar by training, and work at the intersection of gender studies, critical race studies, but also sociology of migration, institutions, and violence. I ethnographically investigate the ways in which state institutions, such as police, healthcare, and welfare sectors, in the name of treating public problems -such as domestic violence and child abuse - (re)produce an unequal social, ethno-racial and gendered order. Rather than viewing nationality, migration, gender, class, ‘race’, and ethnicity as pre-existing and supposedly descriptive categories, I focus on the processes through which public policies and practices create, normalise, and naturalise these categories.
Professor, Associate Tenant, Red Lion Chambers, London, non-practicing barrister, practiced in criminal and family courts.Currently Expert witness for the defense Cambridge Crown Court November 2023. Trustee at Advance charity supporting women and young girls affected by domestic abuse. Mentor for CARA- Council for at risk academics. Member Bar Human Rights Committee. Member Guantanamo Freedom network and APPG. Lectured/researched in US, Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia, Middle East around gender and GBV. Current research-Women who kill men who abuse contemporary and historical - Analysis of men who kill contemporary - Family Law – Pornography - International human rights and GBV. Books= Female Sexuality and the Law, Women On Trial, Policing Domestic Violence, Sex and Gender in the Legal Process, Family Law, The Political Appropriation of the Muslim Body, Islamophobia Counter-Terrorism law and Gender, editor Blackstone’s Guide to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Reprint of Gender Sex and the Law 2024.
Maxine is an inter-disciplinary postgraduate researcher who is interested in youth geographies, disability studies, volunteering, participatory research approaches, afro-feminisms, decolonisation and how these concepts and practices intersect with global development. Guided by Ubuntu, in her PhD research, Max collaborates with diverse young people with disabilities and various stakeholders in youth, development, and disability spaces to understand the nature of participatory development in the context of rural Zimbabwe.
Maxine is also member of the Northumbria Design Feminism Research Group, the Global Development Futures Interdisciplinary Research Theme and the Royal Geography Society’s Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group. Her approach to research focuses on how academic work can translate to tangible benefit in the lives of those who participate in co-creation of knowledge. She is passionate about making academic work inclusive and accessible to diverse actors within and outside of academia.
Sarah is a Midwifery Lecturer and early career researcher. She has a diverse career background having worked in elite sport, clinical Midwifery and Health Visiting prior to moving into academic practice. Sarah is a survivor of domestic abuse featuring emotional and coercive control, and as such has lived personal experience as well as professional training in issues surrounding DA and gendered abuse and violence. Sarah has recently completed MSc in Health and Social Practice concerning the experiences of elite female athletes in pregnancy and maternity care and plans to progress work in this area to PhD. However, Sarah is committed to continuing her research interest in DA in the multidisciplinary field, specifically considering post-separation abuse, accusation of parental alienation within family court and level of knowledge and training of judiciary in these issues, for which Sarah has worked in consultation with the police and crime commissioner’s team with Northumbria Police.
Kirsty Blewitt joined Northumbria University in 2023. She is a Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology, with a specialism in language use in legal settings. Kirsty completed her PhD in Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, focusing on a linguistic analysis of US courtroom interactions. Her current research and interests include: the (co)construction of narratives in legal interactions; domestic violence; identity and narrative(s) of victims/survivors; crime and identity in media; and ethics in research. Kirsty’s current research in DA includes victims/survivors experiences and narratives, including their experience with police and legal services; and the linguistic framing of DA cases in police reports.
An interdisciplinary scholar with a background in media and culture, Sarah’s research and impactful activities aim to enact change for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds or with childhood vulnerabilities and adversities. Her current project is evaluating an early intervention initiative (Operation Encompass) for children experiencing domestic abuse and the ongoing support provided in the school setting. Her previous project, Girl-Kind North-East, was a creative programme that created spaces of value in school and utilised ‘making’ to advance self-worth among young women, fostering newfound confidence to challenge issues such as sexual harassment, body-dissatisfaction, and restrictive gender expectations. Sarah’s commissioned research for Plan International UK outlining the experiences of North-East girls was presented at Parliament, and she is currently partnering with Operation Encompass in contributing to the Department for Education’s review of KCSIE (Keeping Children Safe in Education) guidance for revision for September 2025.
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