Confronting Gender-Based Violence in PhD Fieldwork: Instigation, Implementation, and Dissemination

In 2021, DPU collaborated with the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork (NWDF) to produce a report evaluating the extent to which DPU’s PhD programme was effectively mitigating the risk of gender-based violence (GBV) to students during fieldwork. Established in 2020, NWDF promotes the safety, security, wellbeing, and rights of people who identify as women in research, and has since grown to some 200 members located across six continents. 

The Network grew out of the realisation that although women researchers often experience GBV during fieldwork, the topic is largely absent from literature and rarely acknowledged publicly by academic institutions, supervisors, or students themselves. The report, entitled ‘Confronting Gender-Based Violence in Fieldwork: Potential Sites of Intervention within DPU’s PhD Programme,’ is a primary resource for DPU staff to mainstream concerns surrounding GBV within their teaching practice and supervision as well as within the administration of the department and the programme.

This event will feature a roundtable discussion between Network co-founders Ana Laura Zavala Guillén and Itzel San Roman Pineda, DPU PhD Programme Director Colin Marx, and report author Dena Qaddumi reflecting on the production of the report and its implementation to date at DPU. Dionne Taylor (Birmingham City University) and Erin Pritchard (Liverpool Hope University) will participate as discussants, sharing their perspectives on the report and its relevance to their research and teaching practice and institutions. Ariana Markowitz, Network co-organiser and DPU aluma, will moderate.

Speakers

• Ana Laura Zavala Guillén is a co-founder of NWDF and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.

• Itzel San Roman Pineda is a co-founder of NWDF and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sheffield.

• Colin Marx is Professor of Urban Development Planning at DPU and the director of the department’s PhD programme.

• Dena Qaddumi is a Fellow in City Design and Social Science at LSE. She is an alumna of the MSc in Urban Development Planning at DPU. 

Discussants

• Dionne Taylor is an Associate Professor in Sociology at Birmingham City University and the course leader of the MA programme in Black Studies.

• Erin Pritchard a Senior Lecturer in Disability and Education at Liverpool Hope University, senior Fellow of the Higher Education Association, and a core member of the Centre for Cultural Disability Studies.

Moderator

• Ariana Markowitz is the Community Safety Engagement Manager for the London Borough of Lambeth. She holds a PhD from DPU and helps guide NWDF.