Shana Gander-Zaucker, a PhD student in the School of Psychology, has been filmed talking about her research for the second all-digital version of the Old Joe, the University of Birmingham magazine.
Shana’s PhD is investigating how services can be improved for people who have experienced domestic abuse. She is being supervised by Dr Michael Larkin, Professor John Rose, and Dr Jessica Woodhams. As her contribution to the ‘Rapid Researchers’ segment, Shana explains her research in 60 seconds.
Shana refers to a survey recently conducted by the Home Office which demonstrated that domestic abuse survivors are often dissatisfied with the services they received. She explains that the University of Birmingham decided to work in collaboration with the Police and the domestic violence support organisations in order to conduct a study to explore satisfaction with their services in greater detail and to use these findings to develop services further. Shana’s PhD is a key part of this project. It includes participants from three stakeholder groups: domestic abuse survivors, domestic abuse support staff, and criminal justice staff. Ultimately, her PhD will increase our understanding of the psychological and social needs of domestic abuse survivors. Furthermore, since the co-design approach used in this study has never been used in this context before it will offer internationally ground breaking methodological innovation. Most importantly, her PhD will likely have a significant ‘real world’ impact and provide a mechanism for direct service improvements for domestic abuse survivors.
Old Joe magazine is sent to over 130,000 of the University’s alumni and friends in the UK and across the globe. Five researchers from across the University were filmed for this edition of the magazine.
Shana commented that she really enjoyed contributing to the video and that she felt honoured to have been personally asked to do so.