The project, led by Professor Jelke Boesten, Professor Rachel Kerr and Professor Cathy McIlwaine, and Suzanne Hall as part of the Visual Embodied Methodologies (VEM) network at King's, will develop VEM as an established approach to social science research.

Project strands

Professor Boesten’s research will focus on sexual harassment against and among young people. She will work with students at King’s to map what they understand as sexual harassment, what safe and unsafe spaces are, who might be most vulnerable and why. Alongside, a Just Futures project led by Science Gallery London, she will develop a parallel project with young people from South London, establishing the link between student-life and pre-university or non-university students and young people, and to further explore the meaning of intersectionality.

Professor Cathy McIlwaine will use VEM to work with Migrants in Action, using storytelling, photography, and film to explore resistance and activism among three generations of migrant women.

Professor Rachel Kerr will draw on archival research to produce new visual understandings of conflict-related gendered trauma and pain, how this is expressed and understood and what meanings are attached to it in different contexts.

Suzanne Hall will use the findings of these workstreams in policy labs to explore ways of shaping policy and influencing policy makers in their understanding of these issues.