Most of the RAV team are based in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Birmingham but there are members from across the university as well as other universities internationally.
The RAV team - University of Birmingham
Professor of Gender Based Violence and Health
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Caroline is a registered nurse, midwife and health visitor. Her research interests lie broadly within the scope of addressing inequalities and more specifically are focused on issues of family violence and child abuse and neglect. She has led or been actively involved in securing funding for a number of research projects relevant to these areas.
Professor of Child ProtectionSchool of Nursing and Midwifery
Julie Taylor is a nurse scientist specialising in child maltreatment. She is Professor of Child Protection at the University of Birmingham, in partnership with Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Current work is focused on witchcraft related violence and abuse against children in East Africa.
Professor of Economics
The Department of Economics
Siddhartha is an internationally recognised economist in the field of political economy and public policy. He is the recipient of the Duncan Black prize awarded by the Public Choice Society for his work on the electoral incentives of prosecutors with Bryan McCannon.
Dr Geoff Debelle
Dr Geoff Debelle (MB, BS, FRACP, FRCPCH) is a consultant paediatrician, based in Birmingham, UK. He began as a consultant paediatrician at Monash University Department of Paediatrics and then at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Australia, in 1981. In 1989, he joined Birmingham Children’s Hospital, where he worked until retirement from full-time practice in 2017. He has practiced in both general and community paediatrics paediatric since 1974, specialising in child protection. He currently chairs Birmingham Children’s Hospital’s Child Protection peer review meetings.
Geoff is currently Designated Senior Doctor, Child Safeguarding in Birmingham, a position held since 2000 and was a member of the Birmingham Children Safeguarding Board’s Child Death Overview Panel until July 2017. He was a member of UK’s NICE Guideline Development Group for Child Maltreatment and sat on the National Executive Committee of BASPCAN (British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect). He was a founding member of West Midlands BASPCAN and chaired the branch on two occasions.
Geoff was appointed Honorary Clinical Research Fellow in the Institute of Clinical Sciences’ Risk Abuse and Violence programme, University of Birmingham in October 2016, where he is currently engaged in research into self-harm and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). His other research interests include abusive head trauma, FGM, FII and evaluation of ‘place-based’, trauma-focused interventions. He is a UK member of Euro-CAN.
Geoff was the Officer for Child Protection, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), UK, and chaired the Standing Committee on Child Protection for the College from 2014 - 2018. He has represented the College on many UK governmental child and independent sector child protection committees and working groups, including a recent Department of Health working group on primary prevention of child sexual abuse.
Geoff has extensive experience in child protection and has contributed to primary research and the medical literature. He provides advice to colleagues, Police and Social Services, regionally and nationally. He is very much looking forward to contributing to Inter-CAP.
Lecturer
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Nikolaos is a lecturer in Nursing and leads the Health Research MRes Programme (nursing/midwifery).
Nikolaos is an experienced lecturer and has published research papers in scientific journals in the fields of End-of-Life care, nursing education and Delphi Technique. He has received grants from the European Oncology Nursing Society for research and visiting research centres.
Dr Heather Flowe is a world leading expert in applied memory, focusing on sexual violence and criminal identification procedures. She uses experimental, archival methods and interdisciplinary approaches. She is a Senior in Forensic Psychology at the University of Birmingham, in the School of Psychology. She is a Co-Director (Victims and Vulnerability) of the Centre for Crime, Justice, and Policing as well as the Applied Memory Laboratory. She has been awarded research grants worth over £1 million. Her research is sponsored by the Global Challenges Research Fund (the AHRC and the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account Fund) and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. She has authored more than 50 peer reviewed publications, most of which have undergraduate and postgraduate student authors. Her work has been featured in the media, including the Guardian, Science Daily, the BBC, Criminal Justice and Law Weekly, and in international outlets. Her work has had an impact on policy in the US and the UK. Dr Flowe is Associate Editor for Applied Cognitive Psychology, a member of the Editorial Board for Psychology Public Policy and Law, and Consulting Editor for Cognitive Research in the Public Interest.
She is presently on a British Academy Mid career Fellowship for the academic year 2019-2020 to study victim memory retrieval processes during police interviews.
Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Nutmeg is a Registered Mental Health Nurse and a Lecturer in Nursing. Nutmeg teaches on a variety of mental health nursing and research modules. Her specialist areas of teaching are around de-escalation and violence prevention. She has recently completed her PhD, which investigated violence prevention in secure mental health hospital settings.
Dr Louise Isham
Research Fellow
Louise is a registered social worker and research fellow working with the RAV research programme within the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Her principal research interests are violence and abuse within familial, intimate partner and caring relationships.
Her work also explores how health and social care professionals respond and are supported to engage with such issues in the context of child and adult safeguarding practice. Louise recently completed her PhD, investigating the experiences and needs of family carers affected by violent, abusive or harmful behaviour by the older person for whom they care.
She is currently working on several research and writing projects.
Lecturer in Children’s Nursing
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Lucille is a Registered Children’s Nurse and a Lecturer in Nursing. Lucille teaches on a variety of children’s nursing modules. Her specialist areas of teaching are around equality, diversity and inclusion, neurodiversity, diverse families in healthcare and access to healthcare for adopted children and their parents. She is currently writing up her professional doctorate which investigated the experiences of lesbian parents in accessing healthcare for their adopted children.
Dr Kanta Kumar
Dr Kumar’s research profile to date demonstrates the move towards understanding patient related factors and changing clinical communication particularly for Black Minority Ethnic (BME) patients who find it difficult to engage with long term conditions and its impact on wider society.
She has track record of publications in this area of work. Dr Kumar is currently working closely with British Society for Rheumatology awarded grant to revise the early inflammatory arthritis clinic care pathway for patients from BME committees.
Dr Kanta Kumar is a Trustee of South Asian Health Foundation (musculoskeletal speciality). She is an Advisor to NRAS medical board with expertise in ethnicity research.
Claire O’Reilly
Claire O’Reilly (BDS BSc MFDS RCPS (Glasg)) is a qualified dentist and Academic Clinical Fellow in the specialty of Paediatric Dentistry at Birmingham Dental Hospital. She is an expert member of the Solihull Research Ethics Committee for the Health Research Authority and she also has an interest in patient safety, sitting on the Patient Safety Faculty within Dental Services at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust. Her previous recent involvement in oral health epidemiology field work with five-year olds, seeing the levels of unmet dental need, has sparked her interest to hopefully pursue her own research in this area.
Richard Salkeld
Richard has been an RMN for over 20 years, working in services for those with severe and enduring mental illness, including Acute Inpatient, Crisis Resolution and for the last 10 years managing Assertive Outreach services, covering complex inner city communities. He has a passion for person-centred service delivery, designing and evaluating shared training programmes for staff and service users, with a strong focus on co-production.
Richard completed his Master’s programme in 2010 and has since maintained his interest in clinical research and its application to practice within his role in Assertive Outreach, with a particular focus on personal recovery, exploring issues around managing risk, engagement and substance use.
Richard is currently undertaking research on the experience of Older people using substances within the Masters to Doctorate Bridging Programme via UHB/UoB, with a view to develop funding toward his PhD.
Dana Sammut
Dana is a registered nurse and part-time teaching associate at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests include gender-based violence and healthcare education. Since her undergraduate degree she has worked closely with Dr Caroline Bradbury-Jones on a number of projects including research papers, a local service evaluation report and a GBV e-learning resource for healthcare students.
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Chris Wagstaff is a Senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham. He worked for the NHS for 14 years before entering Higher Education. He is a clinical nurse specialist in mental health and brings this experience to his role as the mental health Field of Practice lead for nursing in the college.
Chris’ responsibilities as Field of Practice lead are the coordination of the teaching on the clinical modules, having an overview of mental health placements, liaising with trust partners and ensuring that the curriculum reflects current policy and best practice.
He is tutor and lecturer to a range to students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, training both mental health nurses and other professionals. Chris plays a strategic role in the Collaborative Learning Initiative (CLI); a joint learning initiative involving clinicians, students, carers and service users, all specialising in mental health.
Aside from teaching and Field of Practice lead responsibilities Chris has an important role in the admissions team; particularly with the widening participation applicants and those applicants applying to transfer from other universities.
His PhD investigated disengagement from mental health services. When services fail to adequately engage with patients the consequences can be wide ranging; the PhD touched on ambivalent relationships with mental health services, violence, drug use and homelessness. Chris’ research is usually qualitative in nature. He is currently involved in two projects: he is leading on the SPLIF (Substance use Populations Impacts on Individuals and Families) research programme and is a collaborating with the SEVA (Student Experiences of Violence and Aggression) study.
Dr Shazia Zafar
Research Fellow
Dr Shazia Zafar is a Research Fellow working on quantitative and qualitative research in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. Dr Zafar gained vast research and scientific experience working in a range of disciplines including healthcare based research and service evaluation studies. Dr Zafar is experienced in methodology development, investigative research, analytical methods, statistical analysis, and rapid systematic reviews. Dr Zafar also has teaching experience gained over several years.
Dr Zafar recently completed the UK-wide Marie Curie Hospice Day Services Evaluation Study in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. Collaborating partners included healthcare staff from Marie Curie and other Hospices, University of Edinburgh, Ulster University, University of Bristol, Queen’s University Belfast, and UCL. There have been a range of outcomes and new findings from this study and several papers are in the process of being published.
Dr Zafar worked closely with patients and continues to develop research projects which not only benefit patients but society as a whole. A selection of Dr Zafar’s projects are Virtual Reality as Relaxation and Pain Control for Patients with Chronic Pain (narration by Sir David Attenborough) and Access to Palliative Care for BAME Patients.
Dr Zafar is conducting a Pan West Midlands IRIS Evaluation Study working in the area of domestic abuse and violence and child abuse within the RAV Research Group. Dr Zafar works closely with collaborating partners: Public Health England, Clinical Leads, CCG Leads, GP Surgeries, Women’s Aid shelters and IRIS Advocate Educators. This is both a quantitative and qualitative study with data analysis. Dr Zafar is also developing research projects with related themes in the RAV Research Group focusing on violence against women, child abuse and child slavery with collaborating partners both in the UK and internationally.
Student members
Mr Ronnie Meechan-Rogers
PhD Student
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Image Based Sexual Abuse (IBSA) and the impact this has on the well-being of LGBTQ individuals. This PhD study aims to explore LGBTQ individuals’ experiences of Image Based Sexual Abuse (also known as revenge pornography) on their mental health and well-being. The study is also interested in how much health and well-being organisations understand about IBSA and how easy it is for individuals to access services.Image Based Sexual Abuse (IBSA) study
Muna Al Mushaikhi
PhD student
Muna is a researcher and full time first-year nursing PhD student at the University of Birmingham. Muna has experience as a neonatal and paediatric nurse and lecturer in the Sultanate of Oman. Her teaching interests are paediatric nursing, research and health promotion. Her research interests are promotion of child safety and prevention of unintentional injuries caused by parental/caregiver negligence among children aged 0-9 years.
Khadijah Alshawush
PhD student
Khadijah is a lecturer in nursing teaching and leadership. Khadijah has eight years of clinical experience in surgical ward and operation room units, and previously worked as a charge nurse and cover nurse for ward managers. She is a certified sedation nurse and is AORN certified. She completed her masters at Cardiff University, undertaking a systematic review on the impact of a nurse residency programme in reducing violence, bullying and stress among new graduate nurses. Her research interests are violence and bullying among student and new graduate nurses. She is now undertaking a PhD on the impact of transition programmes on workplace violence and bullying among Saudi new graduate and student nurses.
Rachel Caswell
PhD student
Rachel Caswell works as a doctor in HIV and Sexual Medicine at University Hospitals Birmingham. As part of this role she is involved in overseeing the response to sexual violence and domestic abuse in these settings. She has recently started a PhD exploring engagement with healthcare after sexual violence
Part-Time PhD in Public Health
Dr Chandan is an Academic Clinical Fellow in the West Midlands based at the Universities of Warwick and Birmingham. His primary interest focuses on public health matters pertaining to forensic clinical and legal areas of medicine. Secondary areas of interest are related to public health issues relating to primary care, digital health and medical technology. Dr Chandan’s PhD focuses on individuals who have suffered child maltreatment and their long-term medical outcomes.
Marie Clancy
PhD student F/T
Marie is a children's nurse by background and has worked clinically in the West Midlands and internationally in Australia, the Caribbean, New Zealand and Malawi. She initially specialised in oncology/haematology, then onto high dependency, A&E and finally within Resuscitation education. She first became interested in nurse education during a secondment through the Tropical Health Education Trust partnership between Birmingham Children's Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre. After spending a total of 16 months in Africa she conducted her Masters in Public Health and wrote her thesis around health professionals’ experiences of paediatric pain in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Marie started her academic lecturing career at the University of Wolverhampton in 2010 and went on to work for the University of Birmingham in 2015. Following the birth of her second child in 2017 she has been focused upon her PhD which explores children's palliative care experiences of refugee and asylum seeker families. As part of her studies Marie works with advisory groups and has taken up a co-chair role for the West Midlands Paediatric Palliative Care Network. She still works clinically and loves the chance to combine her passions of delivering high quality care to children and families, with education and research to provide the best evidence based practice possible.
Ben Donagh
PhD student P/T
Ben Donagh currently works full time as the Children and Young People (CYP) Team Manager at Victim Support for their multi-crime service in Warwickshire and their domestic abuse service in Staffordshire. He is a qualified Young Persons Violence Advocate (YPVA) and has been a frontline practitioner with Victim Support for the past 8 years, providing support to children, young people and vulnerable adults who have been affected by crime and traumatic incidents.
His research interests lie within the impact of domestic violence and abuse on children and young people. Ben has recently started a PhD on a part-time basis where he will begin to explore the experiences of siblings in the context and aftermath of domestic violence and abuse.
Rafiyah Khan
PhD student
Rafiyah is currently undertaking an interdisciplinary PhD exploring child protection and culture within the context of forced migration. Her study will use qualitative methods to explore the experiences of children and parents who have been forcibly displaced to understand the nature of maltreatment at different stages of the resettlement journey. She will also examine the views and experiences of practitioners working with resettled families.
Sarah Rockowitz
PhD student
Sarah is a first-year PhD student conducting research about rape survivorship in Kenya. Prior to the University of Birmingham, Sarah received an MSc in health policy from the University of Edinburgh where she conducted research about barriers refugees in Jordan face when trying to access healthcare. Sarah also has an MSPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she focused on social and behavioural interventions in international health. Her thesis work was done in Tanzania and aimed to discover environmental and emotional drivers that could be used to incite behaviour changes in school children with intestinal worm infections.
Susan Waigwa
PhD student F/T
Susan Waigwa is a registered social worker and a PhD student at the University of Birmingham. Susan is working on a research project about “Health education and female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C)”. Susan has employed multiple methods to explore issues related to FGM/C around the globe, specifically with communities that have a history of FGM/C and health professionals at the fore front of dealing with FGM/C issues in Birmingham, UK. Susan aims to integrate findings and ideas arising from different sources that suggest better actions or procedures. This will promote a better understanding and comprehensive care of communities and individuals affected by FGM/C and also those at risk. Susan is supervised by Dr Lucy Doos, Dr Caroline Bradbury-Jones and Prof Julie Taylor. Susan and the supervisory team have published a systematic review on the subject of this project.
Affiliated members
Dr Maria Clark
Senior Lecturer in Nursing in Safeguarding (BCU), School of Nursing and Midwifery
Dr Maria T. Clark is an affiliate member of the Risk, Abuse and Violence research programme. She is a Senior Lecturer in Safeguarding at Birmingham City University, and an honorary health visitor with Forward Steps Birmingham. Maria is a specialist public health nurse by background: her research is practice-informed and broadly focused on community-based health protection for women and children. She is most interested in how practitioners positively engage with and support others in the helping encounter, by using the full range of resources available to them. She is currently involved in two projects: (1) An Institute of Global Innovation funded study to explore a community-based safety partnership to reduce violence against women in Uganda; (2) a ‘Kitbag’ multi-level approach to supporting professionals who work directly with traumatized women and children. Maria also supports students and staff researching sustainability healthcare issues, linking nursing practice/impact to global health challenges.
Professor Sandra Cristina Pillon
Professor, Faculty of Nursing at Ribeirao Preto, University of Sao Paulo, WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development
Bachelor in Obstetric Nursing. Specialization in Chemical Dependency (Federal University of São Paulo - UNIFESP). PhD in Science in the Psychiatry and Medical Psychology Program (UNIFESP). Post-Doctoral at the University of Alberta in Canada. Associated Professor in 2008 at EERP USP. Sandra is currently a Professor of Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing - University of São Paulo.
She is the coordinator of the Post-Graduate Program in Psychiatric Nursing (EERP USP). She is a researcher for FAPESP, CAPES and CNPq and leads the GRUPAD (CNPq / USP) research group whilst being a member of INPAD (CNPq / UNIFESP). Sandra has published many articles in peer reviewed journals and presented at international conferences, as well as writing book chapters and publishing books. She is a Nursing Specialist with an emphasis on drug use and abuse. Sandra’s most common areas of research interest are: Drugs, Alcohol, Use & Dependency, Violence, Adolescent, AUDIT, Prevention, Treatment, Alcohol, Nursing, Nurses and Students.
Alis Rasul
Clinical Team Leader for Health Visitors at Birmingham Community Healthcare
Alis is currently undertaking a MSc in safeguarding vulnerable children and adults. She is part of the Birmingham practitioners Safeguarding board, and also an active member of the East Birmingham DV forum. Alis has recently started to sit on the Birmingham FGM forum. On a monthly basis she delivers a talk on public health issues on the local radio. She is in the process of writing an article not yet published on a new parenting programme which was delivered in her locality.
Maycon Rogério Seleghim
Professor at University of Sao Paulo at Ribeirao Preto College of Nursing, WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development
Maycon holds a Bachelor's Degree (2008) and a Master's Degree in Nursing (2011) from the State University of Maringa, Parana, Brazil, and Doctoral (2016) and Postdoctoral Degree (2017) from the University of São Paulo at Ribeirao Preto College of Nursing (EERP/USP), with an exchange period at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health of the University of Toronto, Canada. He is currently the Professor of Nursing at EERP/USP.
He has worked as a nurse in public and private hospitals (2011-2013). He is the Editorial Assistant of the Journal Health and Social Transformation and Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Nursing and Health Management, as well as a reviewer of journals with high impact factors. He is interested in the following research areas: health evaluation (quality of services, client/patient satisfaction, and occupational stress); social, clinical and epidemiological toxicology; themes in mental and public health (drug use and abuse, family relations, suicide attempts, prevention and promotion of the elderly health), and studies in the emergency area. His research is both qualitative and quantitative in nature.
Dr Colm Walsh
Research Fellow, Queens University Belfast
Dr Colm Walsh is a research fellow at Queens University Belfast with an interest in higher harm violence and its prevention. He is interested in the associations between childhood adversity, trauma responses and violent outcomes, particularly among young men. He is also interested in practice responses and the role of evidence-based innovations and implementation science in supporting this. Colm convened and is the chair of the regional youth violence research, policy and practice group in Northern Ireland. Before joining QUB, Colm was a senior programmes manager engaged in preventative and early intervention activities for young people with complex needs.