Kindness in Research Conference

This is the 2nd Edition of KiR after the successful 2022 event. KiR is organised by early career researchers and is funded by the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS DTP) through its Student-Led Activity fund.

In trauma-informed research we also acknowledge that anyone can be affected by trauma – including academics, clinicians, and PhD students – and that this is not an inherent sign of vulnerability or weakness but can often be a source of connection, empathy and kindness, leading to better data and more ethical research.

Join us for a discussion on trauma-informed approaches to research and methods. We will bring together a group of researchers and survivor-researchers who have addressed this topic in their work. We will have a mixture of talks, panel discussions and practical workshops. Attendees will leave with a toolkit that they can apply to their own research practice.
The conference will run between 9:45am – 8pm. Catering will be provided for lunch.

Programme:
9:45 – 10:15: Tea, coffee and biscuits

10:15 – 10:30: Introduction and Welcome

10:30 – 11:30: Session I: Talk by Siofra Peeren

11:30 – 11:45: Comfort break

11:45 – 12:45 – Session II: Workshop by Dr. Susanna Alyce – Self Care: today and in future, wellbeing and Trauma-Informed Awareness Toolkit
Trauma is tricky; researching it can bring us close to our own edges, or hand us vicarious trauma. In this workshop we will think together about how to recognise your personal trauma and trigger signature, what ‘holding’ and defusing interventions and actions work for you and use the shared group knowledge to make a map for our own use in our work and lives. We will also explore more immediate skills to find steady ground when shaken. The space will be held by Susanna, a trauma survivor who works with counselling, mindfulness and yoga with clients and uses these skills in her work as a researcher. She recently completed her PhD with survivors of child sexual abuse.

12:45 – 13:45 – Lunch

13:45 – 14:45 – Session III: Workshop by Jane Chevous from Survivors Voice

14:45 – 15:00 – Comfort break

15:00 – 16:00- Session IV: Creative Wellbeing Session led by Writerz N Scribez

16:00 – 16:15 – Comfort break

16:15 – 16:45 – Session V: Talk by Anjuli Kaul – Improving motional safety, coping and resilience in researchers of violence and abuse: Findings from a qualitative study.
In her presentation Anjuli will share the findings of a qualitative study that her team conducted exploring experiences of secondary trauma and organisational support in researchers of violence and abuse. She will also address the ways that organisations can improve their support of violence researchers to foster safer workplace environments and better mental wellbeing for staff and students.

16:45 – 17:00 – Comfort break

17:00 – 18:00 – Panel and Reflections

18:00 – 18:30 – Close and Feedback

18:30 – 20:00 – Drinks and Snacks

Speaker bios:
Siofra Peeren
Siofra is a PhD Student at Kings College London

Dr Susanna Alyce (she/her)
Susanna Alyce recently passed her doctorate at the University of Essex and is an educator in trauma-informed practice at the University for Clinical Psychology students, and for the charity Survivors’ Voices.
Susanna’s other work is in teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and yoga. She is currently working towards her diploma as a Person-Centred Counsellor at The Norwich Centre. She is also a survivor of child sex abuse (CSA). She is a member of the Tavistock Network for Non-Recent CSA (https://sa18838.wixsite.com/nrcsa-network), and facilitates a peer support group for researchers for Survivors Voices. She weaves these threads each to inform the other.
For more information please see: https://susannaalyce.com, htps://justthisstep.com, https://www.networknrcsa.com

Jane Chevous
Jane Chevous is a survivor of child abuse, sexual exploitation as a teenager and rape/spiritual abuse as a young adult. She has fore-fronted participation and lived experience over 40 years work in youth work, social care, lifelong-learning and children’s rights fields, and is a member of the Society of Education and Training (SET). She leads Survivors Voices, a survivor-led organisation which runs peer support network and turns the pain of abuse into power to change society’s response to trauma, through research, creative arts and education. She is a member of the Violence, Abuse & Mental Health Network (VAMHN), associate researcher with King’s College London, a reviewer on the Research Ethics Committee of the Centre of Expertise on child sexual abuse and in the final year of her MSC in Mental Health, Social Inclusion & Recovery with University of Hertfordshire. She represents survivors on the Church of England National Safeguarding Panel, and their Redress Scheme Working Group. A writer publishing on abuse and mental health, spirituality and sailing, she explores all these themes at Barefoot Tales. A community artist, she uses creative writing in all her work, supporting others through workshops and writers groups, and is currently working on her first poetry collection and a revised edition of her book about abuse, trauma and safeguarding.

Anjuli Kaul (she/her)
Anjuli Kaul is a Research Assistant at The Section of Women’s Mental Health, King’s College London. She has previously worked as the Coordinator for the UKRI Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network and as a researcher for the Modern Slavery Core Outcome Set (MS-COS) and Violence, Abuse and Mental Health South Asia (VAMHSA). Her research looks at domestic and sexual violence, global mental health and psychiatric epidemiology.
For more information please see: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/kaul, Twitter: @AnjuliKaul

For free tickets and more information: https://www.eventbrite.es/e/kindness-in-research-2023-tickets-664601299377