Cohort 2025 PhD Project
About The Project
1 in 3 women will experience some form of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in their life (WHO, 2024). This violence can be physical, psychological, sexual, financial and social coercive control. The consequences of DVA can be varied including mental ill health, physical injury, lost employment opportunities, and loss of social and family contacts (United Nations, 2024).
DVA against women and their children often occurs in situations where they cannot change their environment or escape without external, specialised support. To deal with these complexities, specialised DVA organisations like Nottingham & Nottinghamshire’s Juno have been set up and are shaped significantly by lived experience. This essential knowledge is used to inform essential services such as harm reduction, advocacy, and working to create more safety for women in the future. Lived experience is often present at the core of DVA organisation’s values, guiding their aims and practice.
There are many documented benefits of volunteering (e.g. supporting recovery, developing skills and self-efficacy, building meaningful connections, and bringing about sustainable change: Bowe et al., 2022; Wakefield et al., 2024). However, less is known about volunteering for trauma-based organisations. Evidence shows that providers of trauma services can experience secondary traumatisation (Bridger et al., 2020), especially if the volunteer shares experiences with the individuals they are working with.
This PhD project aims to bridge this gap in knowledge by investigating who can benefit from lived experience volunteering in DVA organisations, where secondary traumatisation is more likely to occur, and what interventions can be developed to support the volunteers and the organisations.
Project Aims
This proposed project will investigate the benefits and challenges among those with lived experience of volunteering and acting as peer-supporters for a DVA organisation. Informed by trauma theories of secondary traumatisation and social psychology theories of volunteering and collective action, this PhD has the following three aims:
- Examine who the volunteering is beneficial for and when and how it is best to become a lived experience volunteer for DVA organisations.
- Investigate the challenges and potential harms that lived experienced volunteering can bring for the volunteers (in different roles) and DVA organisations
Identify training needs and successful strategies that can be developed to support the lived experience volunteers and the organisations.
Project Team
- PhD Candidate: Martha Jephcott
- Lead Academic Supervisor: Dr Blerina Kellezi (NTU)
- Academic Co-Supervisor: Dr Laura Blackie (UoN)
- Community Supervisor: Sonia Burns, (Juno Women’s Aid)