Project Mirabal - Domestic Violence Perpetrators - Changing the Story
Project Mirabal is supported by grants from the ESRC, Northern Rock Foundation and LankellyChase Foundation. The research started started in 2009 with a formal research launch in January 2015.
Professors Liz Kelly (London Metropolitan University), Nicole Westmarland (Durham University), and Charlotte Watts (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Northern Rock Foundation to investigate the extent to which perpetrator programmes reduce violence and increase safety for women and children, and the routes by which they contribute to coordinated community responses to domestic violence.
The pilot phase also received funding from LankellyChase Foundation and the Home Office. This research enters a contested arena where questions of methodology and policy direction have reached something of an impasse. By re-casting the research question beyond ‘do they work?', addressing the limitations of previous studies, and introducing innovative directions in analysis they hope to create a new trajectory for domestic violence perpetrator research and interventions.
Two conferences were held during January to mark the end of our research on domestic violence perpetrator programmes. The events, which launched the projects research report, attracted over 500 people.
View the presentations from the London conference on 13 January 2015, Stoke Newington Town Hall
Morning session
Chair's Welcome - Yvonne Roberts, Chief Leader/Writer, The Observer and Findings from Project Mirabal, Prof Liz Kelly - London Metropolitan University, Prof Nicole Westmarland - Durham University, Dr Natasha Howard - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Response from Respect to findings Jo Todd, CEO, Respect Project (available soon)
Question and Answer session - AM
Afternoon session
Chair’s Welcome – Marai Larasi, Director, Imkaan Professor Catherine Donovan, University of Sunderland and Dr Rebecca Barnes, University of Leicester Hidden from view: LGB and/or T perpetrators and the challenges they pose to the gendered story about domestic violence and abuse
Prof. David Gadd, Manchester University Intersectionality in Young Men’s Accounts of Domestic Violence Perpetration