The immobilities of gender-based violence in the Covid-19 pandemic

One particularly concerning consequence of the Covid-19 crisis is the reported surge in domestic abuse. This transdisciplinary project seeks to produce understandings of domestic violence in relation to gender-based violence (GBV) and immobilities in order to produce insights that can be converted to policy. It does so through the creation and analysis of personal stories detailing experiences of GBV across the UK at different stages in the Covid-19 crisis. The Covid-19 lockdown has focused attention on domestic violence and its relationship to constrained mobilities. Understanding domestic abuse within the frame of GBV allows us to look across the multiple sites of felt violence that have been reconfigured. It is critical that we understand and deliberate GBV in these redefined spaces in order to invigorate policy responses to domestic abuse and other GBV within the current crisis and beyond. This research does so through the analysis of told and untold stories of GBV in relation to the complex interdependencies of immobilities. The project investigates how im/mobilities precipitate gendered violence, both felt and experienced and how embodied experiences become situated in mobile spaces - inside, outside and online - in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The project combines analysis of existing stories (in the public domain already) with directed original life writing, supported in creative writing cafes, to develop a form of autoethnography that values narrative accounts of experiences of GBV at different stages of the pandemic and reveals inequalities. These stories will be valued as part of the critical research through academic outputs as well underpinning online conversations with policymakers and professionals with a view to producing tangible policy recommendations.