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Events

Events from the International Criminological Research Unit, and the wider community.

Upcoming events

 

Informed and safe, or blamed and at risk? Victim-survivors’ experiences of domestic violence disclosure schemes in South Australia

15 March 2024 | 10:00 - 11:00 | Meeting Room G, School of Law and Social Justice Building

Domestic violence disclosure schemes (DVDS) were introduced in England and Wales in 2014 following the killing of Clare Wood by her former partner George Appleton, who had an extensive history of domestic abuse. The scheme aims to prevent the perpetration and escalation of violence between intimate partners through the provision of information about prior histories of violence. It has been a popular policy response to domestic abuse globally, with similar schemes introduced in Scotland, Ireland, Saskatchewan (Canada), New Zealand and some states of Australia.

The policy environment surrounding DVDS in Australia is noteworthy. While states such as Victoria and Queensland recommended against the introduction of a DVDS, in 2016 New South Wales began a pilot DVDS scheme which was ultimately disbanded by 2019. In the meantime, South Australia began their own trial which is currently the only operational DVDS in Australia. In the last 18 months, there has been renewed political attention on the merits of DVDS with numerous Australian states currently considering introducing similar models.

In this seminar Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon (Monash University) and Dr Ellen Reeves (University of Liverpool) will draw on their recent study with Prof Sandra Walklate, which offers the first insights into how the South Australian scheme is currently experienced by the victim-survivors who have used it. While drawing on a small sample of victim-survivors (n=10), the findings suggest a disjoin between what the DVDS sets out to achieve (and what South Australian policy makers and practitioners anecdotally tell us it is achieving), and the role that it actually plays in the lives of at-risk victim-survivors. The findings raise important questions about the value of these schemes as part of the suite of policy and legal responses to domestic abuse.

 

Silent Narratives: Intersectional Realities of Intimate Partner Violence among Black Christian Migrant Women

19 March 2024 | 15:00 - 16:00 | Seminar Room 2, University of Liverpool Management School

On March 19th, the International Criminological Research Unit is hosting Gabriella Mwedzi, PhD student at Newcastle University, who will talk about her postgraduate research project “Silent Narratives: Intersectional Realities of Intimate Partner Violence among Black Christian Migrant Women”.

Gabriella will present initial findings from an in-depth examination focusing on the multifaceted challenges encountered by Black Christian migrant women, contributing to obscured instances of intimate partner violence (IPV). These women demonstrate a nuanced grasp of how migration shapes their daily lives, acknowledging their marginalized status across public and private spheres. This awareness often engenders empathy toward IPV perpetrators while instigating reservations about secular interventions. However, these observations merely skim the surface, revealing that migrant Christian communities remain open to engaging with secular and governmental entities. Nevertheless, the interplay of race, migration, and Christianity cultivates a pervasive culture of silence, bolstering agendas entrenched in racism, anti-Blackness, and anti-migrant sentiments.

 

 

Past event highlights

 

Responding to Gender-Based Violence in the Global North

14 March 2024 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

This event, chaired by Professor Sandra Walklate, presented world-leading Australian domestic abuse scholar (Professor Kate Fitz-GibbonMonash University), who spoke to her recent book (co-authored by Professor Sandra Walklate), ‘What is to be done about violence against women’ in a keynote address. This was followed by a discussion led by Dr Ellen Reeves (University of Liverpool) with Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Merseyside Police & Crime Commissioner Emily Spurrell and Professor Louise Crowley (University College Cork) on lessons to be learned from the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

 

‘Dark deeds’: Politics, practice, and rhetoric in English sexual assault cases involving young males

15 November 2023 | Online Seminar

Dr Yorick Smaal, Griffith University, delivered the lecture. 

In late July 1895, amateur shutterbug and innkeeper Grisham Hollywell appeared before the Leeds Summer Assizes on several counts of gross indecency with young males. Multiple complainants and lively adversarial exchange between the prosecutor and defence counsel, arguing for and against Grisham’s ‘dark deeds,’ made compelling copy for the local press. Using the rich cultural evidence that remains from Grisham’s trial, this paper takes one prosecution event to investigate the historical conditions that framed boys as offenders and complainants in sexual assault matters inside and outside the courtroom. Adding to vital feminist and queer scholarship, this presentation assesses the exceptional and common features of criminal trials involving young males and reconsiders what we think we know about historical accounts of crimes against children when most scholarship has recovered the prosecution of crimes against girls.

 

Coronial Inquests, Academic Research, and the Suicide of Vulnerable Populations

23 October 2023 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

Professor Belina Carpenter, Queensland University of Technology, delivered the lecture. 

One purpose of coronial inquests is to investigate deaths in the ‘public interest’ – deaths that warrant further scrutiny due to the characteristics of the deceased, or uncertainty over the circumstances of the death, or where institutional lessons may be learnt.  Suspected suicides in prison or in care warrant such scrutiny. We are particularly interested in how academic research and resultant expert testimony can work hand in hand with coronial findings to perpetuate common sense understandings of the ways in which such vulnerable populations take their own lives, and what can be done to prevent such deaths. 

 

Digiqueer Criminology and Addressing the Rise of Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate

9 October 2023 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

Dr Justin Ellis, The Newcastle University of Australia, delivered the lecture. 

The march of technology is often framed as essential for human progress. However, the social origins of stigma can be hosted in technological architecture and amplify prejudice. Increased vilification and harassment of LGBTQ+ people and their allies across many jurisdictions has highlighted the techno-social conditions under which prejudice can thrive. 

 

Using Rights to Challenge Family Separation by Imprisonment

6 October 2023 | School of Law and Social Justice Building 

Event jointly organised by the Feminist Legal Research and Action Network (FRAN), the European Children's Rights Unit (ECRU), and the International Criminological Research Unit (ICRU). Dr Shona Minson, British Academy Post Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, gave the lecture. 

In the family courts the welfare of children who are separated from their parents due to abuse, harm or neglect is the ‘paramount consideration of the court’ under section 1 of the Children Act 1989. In the criminal courts, when a parent is sentenced to imprisonment, there is no guarantee that the court will even be aware of the existence of the child. As a former family lawyer Shona was bothered by this differentiated treatment and it has formed the basis for ten years of research and advocacy.

This presentation focussed on the use of child rights to challenge family separation by imprisonment, drawing on Shona’s empirical studies of the sentencing of mothers, children’s experiences of parental imprisonment during Covid lockdowns, and access to procedural justice for women in prison whose children are the subject of family court proceedings. Shona also reflected on some ‘lessons learned the hard way’ including the challenges of ‘activist research’ which seeks to influence practice and policy, reformist/ abolitionist dilemmas when engaging in research which may be co-opted to maintain imprisonment, and how not to burnout whilst doing all of the above!

 

Performing Impunity

19 September 2023 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

Professor Elizabeth Stanley (Victoria University of Wellington) delivered the lecture. 

In 2019, the New Zealand government established a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care to investigate the abuse and neglect of children, young people and vulnerable adults in Aotearoa/New Zealand between 1950 and 1999. So far, the public hearings, witness statements and interim reports have charted horrific violence by state and faith-based workers including torture, sexual assaults, serious physical violence and layers of neglect and discrimination. Māori have been especially targeted as victims of abuse and harms.

 

SLSA Prisoner Rights: Time for a Rethink

26 July 2023 | School of Law and Social Justice Building, University of Liverpool

A critical appraisal of prisoner rights in the UK has never been more urgent. Nominally, domestic and international human rights law confer a wide range of legal rights on prisoners. These rights are supposed to provide minimum standards of treatment for prisoners, a guarantee of humane conditions in the face of state power and a punitive political culture. Their effectiveness, however, is under increasing scrutiny.

 

Learning Lessons from Preventable Deaths in Mental Healthcare

6 July 2023 | School of the Arts Library, University of Liverpool

The one-day symposium focussed on learning lessons in relation to preventable deaths in mental healthcare. It examined a variety of deaths, for example; those that occur in NHS settings (both secure and non-secure facilities), and deaths that occur in police custody and prison.

 

The Shaming State: How the US Treats Citizens in Need

26 April 2023 | Online

Dr Sara Salman from Victoria University of Wellington gave a talk as part of the International Criminological Research Unit (ICRU).

 

Tackling Whiteness as a Decolonizing Task in Contemporary Criminology

19 April 2023 | Online

In the 21st century criminology has become a vigorous and dynamic discipline attracting growing numbers of students and developing new research programmes. In this lecture, Rob Earle, Open University, explored how aspects of whiteness in criminology can be identified and made more open to challenge.

 

The mediated (mis)representations of queer men who are serial killers

30 November 2022 | Online

Speaker: Dr Brian Frederick (SUNY)

 

Probation in Scotland and France during the 2020 lockdown

9 November 2022 | Online

Speaker: Professor Martine Herzog-Evans (University of Reims)

 

Understanding the Politics of Contemporary Technologies

27 October 2022| Hybrid

Speakers: Dr Bob Askwith (Liverpool John Moores University), Dr Phil Brooker (University of Liverpool), Dipanjan Saha (University of Liverpool), Dr David Golumbia (Virginia Commonwealth University), Dr Mareile Kaufmann (University of Oslo) , Dr Sarah Esther Lageson (Rutgers University Newark), Gemma Lough (University of Liverpool), Dr Matthew David (University of Durham), Dr Michael Mair (University of Liverpool), Dr Altman Peng (University of Warwick), Professor Ursula Rao (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Gareth Renaud (CISSP, CEH, PGDE), Joseph Savirimuthu (University of Liverpool), Dr Laura Schelenz (Universität Tübingen). 

 

Are Police Fit For Purpose? Cultures, Practices, and Alternatives

15 June 2022 | School of Law and Social Justice Building

Speakers: Professor Sandra Walklate, Professor Louise Westmarland (Open University), Germaine Phillips and Wayne McDonald (United Families and Friends Campaign), Janet Alder (sister of Christopher Alder), Sean Russell (Coventry University), Dr Ian Shannon (University of Leeds), Drs Liz Turner and Mike Rowe, Professor Delores Jones-Brown (Howard University, Washington DC), Jay Hollingsworth (Governor’s Task Force on Independent Investigations of Police Use of Force, Seattle).

The Post Office: A Saga of (Technological) Injustice

25 May 2022 | Online

Speaker: Professor Karen Renaud (University of Strathclyde).

Solidarity in Humanitarian Crisis

17 May 2022 | Hybrid

Speakers: Dr Ala Sirriyeh (University of Lancaster), Dr Gemma Bird, Dr Anne Nelyon, Ewan Roberts (Asylum Link Merseyside), Korrine Sky and Ambrose Musiyiwa (What Next for African Students Who Fled Ukraine?), Dr Oleg Nivievskyi (Kyiv School of Economics), Dr Hanna Vakhitova (Kyiv School of Economics), Sarah Page (Staffordshire University), Cosima Doerfell Hill (Citizen’s Advice Liverpool).

Fighting disinformation in the Ukraine Invasion: a multidisciplinary perspective

8 April 2022 | Hybrid

Speakers: Dr Maria Chayinska (Catholic University of Chile, Santiago)Dr Dmytro Iarovyi (Kyiv School of Economics).

Resistance, Resilience and Recovery

15 December 2021| Online

Speakers: Dr Peter Campbell, Dr Emily Hart, Dr Carly Lightowlers, Dr Katy Roscoe, Dr Daniele Tepe-Belfrage, Dr Liz Turner.

 

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