Dr PJ Annand

Queering Shelter

Principal Investigator: Dr PJ Annand

Funder: The Leverhulme Trust (£118,000)

An LGBTQIA+ led project on violence and shelter.

• What it does it mean to have shelter from violence and harm? What does shelter actually look like?

• Is shelter enough or do we need more than just shelter?

• How can we make sure services meet our needs well?

All this talk of shelter during the pandemic ('shelter at home', 'shelter in place') got us to thinking: What actually is shelter? What does it look like? What does it mean to have shelter, or to need it? What are the violences and other harms that we need shelter from? Neither research nor policy has been able to fully answer these questions about shelter. If we don't understand it, how well can we really be providing it?

The aim of this study is to try and get to the bottom of these questions about shelter. It will do that by looking at these questions from the perspectives of LGBTQ+ people, who are overwhelmingly - and sometimes disproportionately - affected by various forms of shelterless-ness. It follows the queer theory principle that exploring marginal rather than only mainstream perspectives can yield new knowledge via new ways of knowing.

We hope this work will help inform and improve services seeking to provide shelter and support to those who need it, by developing a common understanding of what shelter actually is, what it should be, and what its limits are.

As LGBTQ+ experiences of shelterless-ness are often invisibilised, and thus our needs often go unmet, we also intend for this work to amplify the voices and messages of LGBTQ+ survivors and improve understanding within policy and practice of LGBTQ+ survivors' needs.

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CANVAS: COVID-19 and the Needs of the Domestic Violence and Abuse Sector

Principal Investigators: Dr PJ Annand and Dr Aoife Sadlier

Co-Investigators: Dr Angela Sweeney and Dr Andy Guise

Funder: King's Together Fund (£9,902)

Lockdown measures serve to shut down routes to safety and support for people experiencing domestic violence, and function as a tool for coercion and control by perpetrators. However, government policy and legislation drafted in response to COVID-19, appears to lack provision for people experiencing domestic violence and the services that support them. Our project aims to understand the needs of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) organisations through qualitative research with ten organisations across England and Wales. Our focus includes how the needs of domestic violence organisations have changed because of the pandemic, the extent to which changing needs have been met by government action, which needs are likely to persist over time and how they might be addressed. Our study is interdisciplinary and includes experts in violence, trauma, mental health, health inequalities, gender and sexuality, labour and human rights.

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Beyond Do No Harm: Applying feminist and decolonial approaches to research impact through participatory arts practice

Principal Investigators: Dr PJ Annand and Dr Shakthi Nataraj

Collaborators: Shreya Ila Anasuya, River Újhadbor, Dr Yen Nee Wong

ESRC (IAA) (£10,897)

When conducting social research, the foundational principle in academic research of ‘do no harm’ becomes especially pertinent. In fact, ‘do no harm’ seems to be the very lowest bar to be aiming for. This project aims to go beyond ‘do no harm’ and instead actively foster community benefit, by means of participatory arts practice. It acknowledges, however, that the institution of academia, rooted in Western and patriarchal systems of power, is not always well-equipped to recognise the importance of community-embedded and art-based approaches.

Drawing on de-colonial and feminist principles, this project will deliver participatory arts activities that aim to facilitate enjoyment, connection and meaning-making among LGBTQ+ communities in London (which team members are all connected to themselves). The initiative will run alongside the Queering Shelter study, though will not form part of the research. The idea is to reject 'extractive' academic practices and prioritise meaningful activities with, by and for our communities throughout the life-cycle of academic projects (we tentatively call this ‘procedural impact’).

The project will explore new ways of thinking about research impact that appropriately recognise the real, though sometimes less ‘objectively tangible’, benefits of co-produced and creative practices in research, with a view to informing impact generation planning and assessment in future.

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