Bystanders Presentation

Bystanders – Developing responses to sexual harassment among young people is an international project promoted by the Faculty of Psichology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto which focuses on Sexual Harassment (SH) against teenage girls and young women. The other partners in this project are the United Kingdom, Malta and Slovenia. The Project Bystanders is a result of the excellent collaboration between the partners in the Project CEINAV – Cultural Encounters in Intervention Against Violence, lead by Carol Hagemann-White. 

Sexual Harassment is defined by unwanted physical and nonphysical verbal and cyber sexual attention, including a wide range of behaviors that victimize women and girls. Boys and young men may also be victims of SH, especially when they do not meet the standards of the hegemonic masculinity socialization.

People who see the violent behavior and can do something to help the victims are also involved in these situations — they are bystanders. The Project Bystanders aims to work with bystanders to improve awareness and responses to SH in schools. 

Hence, the objectives of the Project are:

- to increase knowledge and awareness about SH in high school students, teachers and other school staff in PT, Sl, UK and Mt

- to develop and deliver a training program for young people and school staff enabling them to intervene in situations of SH and/or assault as bystanders

- to increase the motivation of bystanders to stop SH in high schools

- to develop a manual and materials enabling young people to deal with SH at school and its surroundings, adapted to the context and cultures of the four countries

- to work with a whole school approach to policies and protocols on SH

- to compare the implementation and effectiveness of the program within and between the four countries

The Project Team:

Portugal:

Faculty of Phycology and Education Sciences University of Porto:

•       Maria José Magalhães:

UMAR:

Women’s Association, Alternative and Response

•       Ana Guerreiro

•       Cátia Pontedeira

United kingdom:

London Metropoly University

•       Liz Kelly

Malta

University of Malta

•       Aleksndar Dimitrijevic

•       Marcelline Naudi

•       Rodianne Ellul Buhagiar

•       Barbara Stelnaszek

Slovenia

Peace Institute - Institute for Comtemporary Social and Political Studies

•       Vlasta Jalušič

•       Maja Ladić

•       Lana Zdravkovic

DNK   

•       Anita Jerina

•       Vučenović

•       Sabina Cobec

 

CEINAV outputs available!

CEINAV has achieved one of its main goals: to develop a transnational foundation for ethical practice in intervention, taking a holistic view of the forms of violence we have studied, while attending to differences. The paper “Transnational Foundations for Ethical Practice inInterventions Against Violence Against Women and Child Abuse” results from in-depth discussions in the entire four-country team, and was written by Liz Kelly and Thomas Meysen with an approach that speaks directly to practitioners and the challenges they face. We make this paper available in the four languages of our project, and invite others to translate into further languages (but please let us know if you do so!)

 

CEINAV hat  eines seiner Hauptziele erreicht: Transnationale Grundlagen für eine ethische Praxis bei Interventionen entwickeln und dabei einerseits eine ganzheitliche Sicht auf die verschiedenen Gewaltformen die wir erforscht haben richten, während wir gleichzeitig ein Auge auf die Unterschiede behalten. Das Papier “Transnationale Grundlagen für eine ethische Praxis bei Interventionen wegen Gewalt gegen Frauen und Kinder” ist ein Ergebnis intensiver Diskussion im ganzen Vier-Länder-Team. Geschrieben haben es Liz Kelly und Thomas Meysen in einer Weise die direkt zu Fachkräften spricht und die Herausforderungen denen sie gegenüberstehen anerkennt. Wir machen dieses Papier in den vier Sprachen unseres Projektes zugänglich und laden Andere ein, es in ihre Sprachen zu übersetzen (aber bitte lassen Sie uns wissen, wenn sie das tun!)

HERA closing event in Prague

The CEINAV leading team (project leader prof. Carol Hagemann White and principal investigators prof. Liz Kelly, prof. Maria Jose Magalhaes, prof. Vlasta Jalusic and dr. Thomas Meysen) participated at the HERA closing event in Prague (15-16 September 2016).

left to right: Thomas Meysen, Liz Kelly, Vlasta Jalusic, Carol
Hagemann-White, Maria Jose Magalhaes

 In a session on "the spoken word" we read stories from the anthology  ("Experiences of Intervention Against Violence. An Anthology of Stories. Cultural Encounters in Intervention Against Violence, Vol II) which will be published soon. Participants found it very moving.

Final presentation of the CEINAV project in Slovenia

The final presentation of the CEINAV project in Slovenia happened on Wednesday, 31st August 2016 at the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana. The event was opened with general overview of the project – its phases, methodology and activities – by dr. Lana Zdravković, followed by the presentation of the document “Transnational Foundation for Guidelines for Ethical Practice in Interventions against Interpersonal Violence”, with the emphasis on the issue of voices of the survivors, and elaboration of the ethical dilemmas in interventions – especially minority cases – by dr. Vlasta Jalušič.

The introduction was followed by the premiere screening of the documentary film “Everything I Told Them” (the first public screening of the film in Slovenia), after which the public applauded and expressed their satisfaction.

 Jasna Podreka, Katarina Vučko, Vlasta Jalušič, Mojca Dobnikar, Katja Zabukovec Kerin, Dragan Petrovec

The second part of the closing event continued with the panel “Violence in the Private Sphere and Ethic of Intervention”, conceptualized and moderated by dr. Vlasta Jalušič. Participants were: Katja Zabukovec Kerin, Association for non-violent communication; dr. Jasna Podreka, Faculty of Arts; Katarina Vučko, The Peace Institute; Mojca Dobnikar, the founder of the first SOS telephone for women and children; and dr. Dragan Petrovec, Institute of criminology at the Faculty of Law. They all addressed particular issues from their expertise and work and opened a further debate on our findings, particularly in the EU and Slovenian context.  

Approximately 30 people attended the event. Wider public, students, scholars and some professionals who previously took active part in the project's workshops were present as well. Unfortunately, no survivors (victims of various types of violence considered within the research) attended the event due to other obligations. The great majority of the participants were very interested and impressed with the results of the research. A small group questioned why CEINAV did not study violence against men as well; the researchers explained this by reference to the Istanbul Convention.

Shaping the project outcomes on a working seminar in Ljubliana

Last week the full team of CEINAV researchers worked together for four days to deepen the project findings and prepare the final steps. 

During the winter the projects teams in the four countries met with practitioners, stakeholders and women and  young people who had told us about their intervention experiences. These meetings served to present and discuss preliminary results, as well as reflecting on the art from creative workshops with survivors of violence. Now the researchers are developing a synthesis across countries for each form of violence. We call them “triangulation papers” because they bring together the perspectives of professionals, the experiences of survivors, and our background knowledge about intervention systems like three corners of a triangle.

In Ljublana we have taken important steps towards producing outcomes that we hope will be useful and accessible to practitioners and stakeholders in the intervention field. These include: (1) a paper proposing some ethical foundations for effective and helpful intervention practice, (2) a video with voices of professionals and of survivors illustrating different perceptions of key ethical issues, and (3) an anthology of stories based on the messages that survivors who have travelled through a history of intervention could offer to intervention actors. In addition, videos are being finalised from the four countries showing, in very different ways, how art work by survivors might communicate important aspects of their intervention experience. Separate papers will undertake a synthesis of the theoretical work in CEINAV.

Alongside planning for the closing events in each of the four countries, the 4-day seminar also yielded a plan for an edited book to which the both the lead researchers and the early career researchers will contribute papers; a prospectus is being developed within the next few weeks. It will be a site for explaining more fully the methodology, the theoretical framework, and some interesting findings. 

left to right back: Thomas Meysen, Rita Lopez, Maria José Magalhães,
Liz Kelly, Vlasta Jalušič, Carol Hagemann-White, Janna Beckmann,
left to right front: Veronika Bajt, Lana Zdravković, Bianca Grafe,
Raquel Felgueiras, Angélica Lima Cruz

  

The space of four days in Ljubljana opened up time for every participant to comment on a preliminary version of the video, and on the draft paper of ethical foundations. In depth debates during the meeting concerned how ethical guidance for practice might be connected with ethical theories. Comparing overall “intervention cultures” was also a topic of lively debate, where the contentions around the notion of culture and the complexity of intervention systems and practices circulated to further develop our understanding. There is work still to be done on a conceptual framework for our findings, with the challenge of integrating intersectionality and postcolonial theories with insights from the theories of subalternity and coloniality, This path will help us articulate and clarify the connections between structural violence and interpersonal violence. 

Surrounded by beautiful sights and wonderful sunshine, CEINAV researchers gathered new energy to take back to our respective countries and to work on the final steps of the project.