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People

Director

Sally McManus

Sally McManus

Sally McManus is a Professor at the Violence and Society Centre. She is also affiliated with the National Centre for Social Research and has previously been funded by UKRI ESRC and NIHR.

Her expertise in quantitative research methods and the measurement of mental health focuses on population trends and the social determinants of mental health, including the role played by violence and abuse.


Knowledge Exchange Manager

Profile Photo of Kimberly Cullen

Kimberly Cullen

Kimberly Cullen is the Knowledge Exchange Manager for the UKPRP Violence, Health and Society Consortium. Her role is to optimise the impact of the research to reduce violence by engaging multiple stakeholders, to play a key role in developing and consolidating pathways to impact, and to develop the public engagement of the Consortium’s communications strategy. She has worked in the UK, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates in project / programme, stakeholder, and data management across government and academia.



Researchers

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Dr Elizabeth Cook

Elizabeth Cook is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Violence and Society Centre. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford and has previously been funded by the UKRI ESRC. Her expertise in qualitative research methods focuses on fatal violence, gender, family, and voluntary sector responses to violence. She is the author of Family Activism in the Aftermath of Fatal Violence (Routledge, 2021).


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Dr Jessica Corsi

Jessica Corsi is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Violence and Society Centre. She has previously worked for the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. Her expertise spans public international law, regional law, and domestic law, combining traditional legal and social science research methods to understand how the law can prevent and alleviate violence and foster substantive and transformative equality.


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Dr Alexandria Innes

Alexandria Innes is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Violence and Society Centre. She has previously been funded by the UKRI AHRC-ESRC. Her expertise in the international politics of migration is situated at the intersection of migration studies and critical security studies in international relations. She is the author of Postcolonial Citizenship and Transnational Identity (Routledge, 2020).


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Dr Ruth Weir

Ruth Weir is a Senior Research Fellow in Criminology at the Violence and Society Centre. She previously worked as a Research Fellow on the HEFCE funded Catalyst Project and as a Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Essex. She is a steering group member of the Domestic Abuse Research Network (DARNet) and has worked on several research projects funded by UKRI ESRC, Comic Relief and the Home Office. Prior to academia, Ruth held several research, intelligence and policy positions in local government and for the Home Office.


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Dr Ladan Hashemi

Ladan Hashemi is a Senior Research Fellow specializing in the application of advanced quantitative research methods and secondary data analysis of a global data set on violence at the Violence and Society Centre. She has research experience in social science and epidemiology, with an emphasis on Family Violence and Adverse Childhood Experiences, having worked for the University of Auckland as a Senior Research Fellow and the lead analyst of the 2019 New Zealand Family Violence Study. Ladan has recognised expertise in big data analytics and her recent work focused on gender patterns in interpersonal violence.


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Dr Polina Obolenskaya

Polina Obolenskaya is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the Violence and Society Centre, working on the Crime Survey for England and Wales. She previously worked at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, UCL Institute of Education and the Royal National Institute of Blind People. Polina is a social scientist with research experience across a number of social policy areas, including health and adult social care. Her research has focused predominantly on disadvantage and social and economic inequalities, and analysis of a range of national surveys.


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Dr Annie Bunce

Annie Bunce is a Research Fellow in Criminology at the Violence and Society Centre. Her doctoral research explored prisoners’ motivation to participate in an innovative rehabilitation programme through the lens of Self-Determination Theory. She previously worked as a Research Officer at Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of prisons, conducting and analysing surveys on treatment and conditions with detainees in prison, young offender institutions, and immigration detention facilities, and has research and managerial experience working for third sector organisations, including Victim Support and the Samaritans.

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Dr Niels Blom

Niels Blom is a Research Fellow at the Violence and Society Centre, focusing on the Crime Survey for England and Wales and the development of an integrated dataset on violence. He has previously worked for the University of Bath and University of Southampton. His expertise in quantitative research methods focuses on family sociology, family demography, economic inequalities, and wellbeing, particularly in the study of partner relationship quality.


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Dr Anastasia Fadeeva

Anastasia Fadeeva is a Research Fellow in Health Sciences in the Violence and Society Centre. She has research experience in public health, social epidemiology, medicine, and health psychology with an emphasis on health determinants, mental health, and health behaviours. Her doctoral research explored the predictors of positive retirement adjustment and ways to promote well-being and physical activity during retirement transition. She previously worked at the Northern Hub for Veterans and Military Families Research at Northumbria University researching the distribution, patterns, and determinants of physical and mental health in the UK veterans’ cohort.


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Hannah Manzur

Hannah Manzur is a PhD Candidate and Research Associate in the Violence and Society Centre. Her doctoral research explores the relationship between gender, violence and Brexit, focusing on the impact of Brexit on rates of and responses to violence against women and girls in the UK. She previously worked as a Gender Policy Advisor at the European Parliament during Brexit.


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Katie Smith

Katie Smith is a PhD candidate at the Violence and Society Centre, in collaboration with Women’s Aid Federation of England. Her research explores the patterns in which victim-survivors access domestic violence and abuse support services in England, utilising Women’s Aid’s administrative datasets. Katie is a steering committee member of the VAWG Research Network and a Data Analyst for IRISi. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked in the third sector for Women’s Aid and a local domestic abuse service. Katie is interested in feminist quantitative approaches, violence against women and girls and domestic violence interventions.