Dr. Mithu M. Sanyal is a radio presenter, an award winning academic, a prominent German feminist and an author. Her first book, Vulva, was translated into 5 languages. Her second book Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo came out earlier this year and has received widespread acclaim. In this conversation, Mithu talks about the cultural history of rape, how honour is linked to rape and the notion of 'hysteria' to false accusations. Moving to present day issues, she lends her expertise as an academic and a feminist organizer and dissects concepts such as restorative justice, healing with a focus on the victim and the importance of breaking the re-offending cycle for perpetrators. 

Buy Rape: From Lucretia to #MeToo: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2922-rape and at any major book retailer.

Dr. Mithu Sanyal: From Lucretia to #MeToo

Dr. Holly Davis: Sex Work & Sexual Violence

Dr. Franziska Meinck is a lecturer in Social Work at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focus is the prevalence, risk and protective factors of child maltreatment in vulnerable populations in Sub-Saharan Africa, health outcomes of violence exposure in childhood, childhood violence prevention and on the development and testing of global child abuse measures. Franziska is currently funded by an ESRC Future Research Leader Award and in 2016 she won the ISPCAN C. Henry Kempe Award for outstanding young professional in the field of child abuse and neglect. In this conversation, we spoke about her data oriented studies looking at different forms of child abuse in South Africa, Swaziland and beyond. We discussed forms of child abuse, the proportion of the problem, access to child protection services, prevention and measurement of child abuse, and finally, emotional challenges for the researcher. 

Trigger Warning: This conversation features mentions of sexual and other kinds of violence both in specific cases and generally. 

Organisations that provide support:

India: https://www.childlineindia.org.in/
South Africa: http://www.childlinesa.org.za
UK: childline.org.uk
USA: https://www.childhelp.org/

Talking Research

Dr. Franziska Meinck: Child Abuse

Erin Shannon is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Education at the University of York in York, England with several years of experience in researching sexual violence in universities. Her Ph.D. research project is a comparative study of university responses to sexual violence in the US and England. In this conversation, we go into her Ph.D. research in detail. We look at how university responses interact with the neoliberal university, preserving reputation and the benefits of comparing response frameworks. Erin explained the issues with a national framework in the US- Title IX and with the lack of a unified framework across English universities and how borrowing of framework ideas can help.

Erin Shannon: University Responses to Sexual Violence

Dr. Manali Desai is a Reader in Comparative and Historical Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on the areas of state formation, political parties, social movements, development, ethnic violence, gender and post-colonial studies. In this conversation, we spoke about gendered violence in India in general and Manali's related research in particular. Manali brought along her expertise of post-colonial India and used her sociological lens to dissect the institutional conditions that normalise violence, neoliberalism and how that relates to sexual violence, white feminist gaze and more. 

Article that we discussed: Desai, M. 2016. ‘Gendered Violence and the Body Politic in India', New Left Review, May/June.

Manali's Books: 

DeLeon, C., M. Desai and C. Tugal (eds.). 2015. Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. (ASA Political Sociology Section: Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (Article or Book Chapter) Award  (Honorable Mention)

Chatterjee, P., M. Desai and P. Roy (eds.). 2009. States of Trauma: Gender and Violence in South Asia.  New Delhi: Zubaan and Cambridge University Press.

Desai, M. 2007. State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, 1860-1990. [Studies in Asia's Transformations Series]. London and New York: Routledge.

Dr. Manali Desai: Gendered Violence in India

Talking Research features in-depth interviews with prominent academics and researchers who study sexual violence across disciplines. The aim is to make academic knowledge and research on sexual violence accessible. Every Sunday, guests talk about their research, their findings, the process, the challenges and everything else in between. CW: Sexual Violence
talkingresearchpodcast@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/talkingresearch https://twitter.com/talk_research  https://yourstory.com/2016/04/women-helpline-india Scotland: https://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/ England & Wales: https://rapecrisis.org.uk/ USA: https://www.rainn.org/