Events

The Violence and Society Centre hosts a wide range of academic and public events which showcase our research and engage with contemporary debates and issues. To participate in any of our upcoming events and engagements, watch this page for any new events postings. You can also join our mailing list for up-to-date news and invitations to our events, and check out summaries and recordings of our past events.

Past Events

The Violence and Society Centre has hosted a range of events aimed at building impact and engagement with researchers and stakeholders from across the field. Recent events include report launches, webinars, and workshops on a variety of issues and research projects. You can find recordings, relevant papers and summaries of these events below.

- 2021/22 Events -

The recourse to the (criminal) law: understanding intersecting inequalities and violence

Wednesday 19^th May 2021, 2-3pm

Watch the Recourse to the Criminal Law webinar recording

Summary

The development of law as a response to violence has long been important. Yet this generates further troubles. Responses to violence require analyses of intersecting inequalities, such as gender, immigration status, ethnicity/race, and age, with such intersections becoming the focus of debate for policy making in the context of the Domestic Abuse Bill, now in its final stages of progress.

The many attempts at amendment have raised important questions including the implications of legislative changes for domestic violence and abuse. What are the policy and theoretical issues at stake? How are concepts of ‘gender’ and ‘abuse’ or ‘violence’ approached? What does the recourse to law as a strategy for responding to domestic violence and abuse achieve? And what protections does this legislative change provide for migrant and minoritized women?

Speakers and Chair

The event will include a series of talks from the following panellists:

• Professor Aisha K. Gill, Professor of Criminology, University of Roehampton (UK)
• Professor Sandra Walklate, Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool (UK) and Professor of Criminology at Monash University (Australia)
• Dr Alexandria Innes, Lecturer in the Violence and Society Centre in International Relations, City, University of London (UK)

Chair:

• Professor Sylvia Walby, Professor of Sociology, City, University of London (UK)

This event was hosted by the Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, UK.

Donate to the Covid-19/Black and Minority Ethnic Communities/Emergency NRPF Fundraiser

The Cost of Trafficking in Human Beings: Report Launch

Thursday 29th October 2020, 2-3pm

Watch the Cost of Human Trafficking webinar recording

Summary

A new report on the Cost of Trafficking in Human Beings led by the Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, was published by the European Commission to mark European Anti-Trafficking Day, 18 October 2020.

Download the report

This webinar on 29 October highlighted key findings from the report and made the case for why a gender disaggregated approach that takes account of longer term harms is key to understanding the full costs associated with trafficking.

Trafficking of human beings in the EU disproportionately affects women and only three per cent of the total costs is spent on specialised support for victims. The study finds that the total costs associated with the trafficking of women are almost three times greater than that for men.

The event consisted of contributions by the report authors, led by Professor Sylvia Walby, a public Q&A, and discussion; and chaired by Professor Karen Shire, who has published on the gender dimension of trafficking in human beings in the EU.

This report builds on previous research on trafficking in human beings by Walby and colleagues for the EU Anti-Trafficking Unit, which can be found here:

Data collection on trafficking in human beings in the EU.

Comprehensive Policy Review of Anti-Trafficking Projects funded by the European Commission.

Gender Dimension of Trafficking in Human Beings.

Speakers and Discussants

Speakers:

• Sylvia Walby (City, University of London, UK)
• Sally McManus (City, University of London, UK)
• Sian Oram (King’s College London, UK)
• Jessica Phoenix (City, University of London, UK)
• Merili Pullerits (City, University of London, UK)

Chair:

• Karen Shire (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)

This event was hosted by the Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, UK.

Varieties of Gender Regimes Webinar

Thursday 24^th September 2020

Watch the Variety of Gender Regimes webinar recording

Summary

This event discussed the Special Section of Social Politics on ‘Varieties of Gender Regimes’ published in August 2020.

What are the varieties of gender regime? This event focused on Walby’s varieties of gender regimes – domestic and public regimes; and, within the public, both neoliberal and social democratic varieties – and pathways to alternative forms. Is this model sufficient to encompass the turn to less progressive forms and multiple global regions or are further varieties needed? At stake here is the distinction between modern and premodern, public and domestic, the meaning of conservative, the concept of the family, and the theorisation of violence.

Speakers and Discussants

The authors introduced their papers, followed by two discussants, and then opened to question and answer:

• Karen Shire (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) and Sylvia Walby (City, University of London, UK): Advances in Theorizing Varieties of Gender Regimes.
• Sylvia Walby (City, University of London, UK): Varieties of Gender Regimes.
• Karen Shire (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) and Kumiko Nemoto (Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, Japan): The Origins and Transformations of Conservative Gender Regimes in Germany and Japan.
• Valentine M. Moghadam (Northeastern University, US): Gender Regimes in the Middle East and North Africa: The Power of Feminist Movements. 
• Emanuela Lombardo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and Alba Alonso (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Spain): Gender regime change in decentralized states: the case of Spain.
• Ece Kocabicak (Open University, UK): Why property matters? New varieties of domestic patriarchy in Turkey. 
• Jeff Hearn (Örebro University, Sweden; University of Huddersfield, UK), Sofia Strid (Örebro University, Sweden), Anne Laure Humbert (Oxford Brookes University, UK), Dag Balkmar (Örebro University, Sweden) and Marine Delaunay (Centre Emile Durkheim): From Gender Regimes to Violence Regimes: Re-thinking the Position of Violence.

Moderator:

• Heidi Gottfried (Wayne State University, USA)

Discussants:

• Mieke Verloo (Radboud University, Netherlands)
• Roberta Guerrina (University of Bristol, UK)

This event was hosted by Sylvia Walby at the Violence and Society Centre, City, University of London, UK, and co-organised with Karen Shire at the Essen College for Gender Research, University Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

For further information, please email: ekfg@uni-due.de

- 2019/20 Events -

Measuring Violence: The Mental Health Dimension

Tuesday, 18th June 2019

Over 50 academics, policymakers, and practitioners working on violence and mental health took part in Measuring Violence: The Mental Health Dimension hosted by the Violence and Society Centre on 18^th June 2019.

Participants from: Office of National Statistics; Home Office; Lancet Psychiatry and the Economic and Social Research Council joined practitioners from; End Violence Against Women; Rape Crisis; Safe Lives; Imkaan and Against Violence and Abuse and scholars from; Kings College London University College London; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Universities of Bristol; East London; Lancaster and Liverpool John Moores were welcomed by the Dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Chris Greer.

The aim was to develop a measurement framework on violence and mental health which mainstreams gender and develops a language shared by multiple academic disciplines and professional and practice communities. The workshop was funded by a large UK Research and Innovation and Economic and Social Research Council grant on Violence, Abuse and Mental Health: Opportunities for Change (PI: Louise Howard, King’s College; 2018-2022).

Sylvia Walby, Director of the Violence and Society Centre, leads the Measurement Stream of this grant and will host a second measuring violence workshop next year.

Varieties of Gender Regimes Workshop

Friday, 7th June 2019

Theorising Varieties of Gender Regimes was the title of a workshop hosted by the Violence and Society Centre on 7^th June 2019. 15 scholars of sociology, political science and gender studies from Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States came together to discuss and debate different ways of theorising and operationalising gender regimes across different contexts and scales.

The workshop was funded by Sylvia Walby’s Anneliese Maier Research Award (Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, 2018-2023), which is to finance international and interdisciplinary research collaboration with colleagues in Germany on re-working a theory of society that better takes violence and gender inequality into account.

The debate will continue, with the next gender regimes workshop held in Berlin in 2020.