Have a read below to see what our ECR bursary winner Murylo Batista did with their award money. To find out how you can apply to our ECR Bursary Scheme click here.

Thanks to the VAMHN, on 21-22 January 2022, I was given the opportunity to attend a training on sequence analysis for the social sciences delivered through the National Centre for Research Methods and taught by Professor Nicola Barban from the University of Bologna. Sequence analysis originated in computational biology to study and compare DNA sequences and has been readily adapted by social scientists to study events in the life course. My research questions lie in the application of life course approaches to understanding the dynamics of violence against women and children. VAWC can occur at any age but also vary by age, whereby differences in experiences during early life can be associated with health outcomes in later life.

As an early career demographer working in social services for missing and exploited children, I am interested in how population health sciences could generate new insights for safeguarding strategies that are typically more attuned to individual case work. For example, let us say a child went missing (M) in June and July but was at home (H) for the other months in an annual period. We can use sequence analysis to represent the missing episode like this: HHHHHMMHHHHHH. Then, another child went missing in September through November: HHHHHHHHMMMH. We go on to analyse these patterns using the mathematical properties underlying the positions (first, second, third, etc.…) of both states in the sequence (at home or missing). We can compare the missing trajectories of young people based on individual characteristics, safeguarding concerns, and health outcomes. The NCRM training on sequence analysis demonstrated that applying demography and life course perspectives to violence and abuse can lead us to new research questions for social services. 

Have a read below to see what our ECR bursary winner Zoe Moula did with her award money. To find out how you can apply to our ECR Bursary Scheme click here.

My name is Zoe Moula (well, Dr Zoe Moula!) and I’m an early career researcher investigating the effectiveness of arts therapies for children’s quality of life and wellbeing. During my PhD, I designed and conducted a pilot RCT for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties across five primary schools in the Northwest of England. The intervention included art therapy, music therapy, dance movement therapy, and dramatherapy. The 64 children who participated in this study had experienced domestic issues, such as divorce, parental separation, and on several occasions, domestic abuse. Some children were also adopted, while some were in foster care.
 
I was expected to present the findings of my study at 14th World Conference for Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counseling in Auckland University, New Zealand. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference was postponed for a year when I was no longer a student, and as such, the university where I conducted my research would not support me with the expenses.
 
I was very fortunate to receive the VAMHN ECR training bursary, which allowed me to present my PhD online. Following my presentation, I received excellent, constructive feedback from experts in this area, while I was also able to connect with other person-centred counsellors and psychotherapists nationally and internationally. I received great advice on how to apply for future ECR funding and which areas of my PhD could be improved to make my applications stronger. I am extremely thankful to the VAMHN network for offering me this opportunity and I would strongly advice fellow-ECRs to apply for this bursary. 

Have a read below to see what our ECR bursary winner Jo Higson did with their award money. To find out how you can apply to our ECR Bursary Scheme click here.

I am currently doing a self-funded, part-time PhD in Creative Writing looking at the representation of domestic abuse in contemporary narrative fiction and who speaks for survivors. As part of my research I am keen to give people the opportunity to express themselves and their experiences using creative writing. While I am a trained and experienced coach, trainer and facilitator, it is a huge responsibility when people are writing about traumatic experiences to keep it a healthy and safe experience and I was keen to gain some knowledge and experience of how to ensure I can do that.
 
With the VAMN Bursary I was able to attend an Introduction to Therapeutic Writing run by the well-known poetry therapist, Charmaine Pollard. The course covered the principles of poetry therapy and therapeutic writing; enabled us to experience different therapeutic writing techniques, and, most importantly for me, how to create and maintain a safe and supportive framework for therapeutic work.
 
I came away with a greater understanding of the difference between creative writing and therapeutic writing and realised that what I am proposing to do would be creative writing with a therapeutic intent rather than pure therapeutic writing. Creating a safe space, however, will be just as important.
 
Charmaine is an inspirational tutor and role model for this type of work, In the future I would be interested in doing more therapeutic writing but for now I need to focus on my PhD and use the knowledge I’ve gained here to enhance the work I do with other survivors as part of my research. I am really grateful for the opportunity the bursary provided.

Have a read below to see what our ECR bursary winner Sylvia Behrendt did with her award money. To find out how you can apply to our ECR Bursary Scheme click here.

On the 9th and 10th of October, I was able to attend the introductory workshop on “Working creatively with Trauma” by Jill Carter. The workshop was held online and attended by a group of therapists and counsellors interested in expanding their creative skillset when working with clients. The course was conducted over 2 days and offered ample insight into the benefits of working with trauma creatively. An important part of the course was the exploration of what trauma can mean, how trauma can manifest in the nervous system and how working creatively can benefit the process of recovery. As an experiential workshop, all participants had the chance to work creatively themselves and explore the different impacts of sandplay, music, art and other expressive arts tools. The workshop was aimed to leave participants with an expanded repertoire of tools to engage with in client work and in their research both in online work and face-to-face. It particularly highlighted the gap that creative work can address when trauma, developmental factors and other aspects can impede the ability to name and describe. As the GBV lead of my team, I am looking forward to the chance to share the experience with my team and beyond and to help inform the landscape of wellbeing and counselling support offered to our students via active provision and ongoing research. 

Have a read below to see what our ECR bursary winner Raeena Hirve did with her award money. To find out how you can apply to our ECR Bursary Scheme click here.

​I was extremely pleased to be awarded the Early Career Researcher grant from VAMHN to attend a short course by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on researching gender-based violence in May 2021. The purpose of the course was to strengthen participants’ knowledge and skills to conduct or commission technically rigorous, ethical and policy- and service-relevant research on various forms of violence against women. Over the course of 2 weeks, we were taught through a series of online interactive lectures, practical exercises, group work and assigned reading. The course covered a range of topics on violence including approaches to researching violence, developing conceptual frameworks, ethics and safety, research in conflict settings etc.  I found myself really enjoying every lecture (and bonus lectures) and was enthusiastic to go through all the readings. I also really appreciated the group work where we were asked to design and conceptualise GBV research in a humanitarian setting. This group work enabled us to really use what we learnt over the course and apply it practically. It was also a great opportunity to meet and learn from my team members. I learnt the current gold standard methods to conceptualise and measure violence exposures, various methodological techniques for assessing the relationship between violence and health outcomes and practical issues faced when meeting ethical and safety obligations. As an early career researcher, this course gave me the skills and confidence to purse a PhD and am very grateful for this opportunity.