Dear Colleague,
You are invited to a 1-day workshop hosted by the Institute of Advanced Studies and Institute for Research into Superdiversity, University of Birmingham on Sexual abuse on children: representation of Class, Race and Gender on Wednesday 17 July 2013. Keynote speakers so far confirmed include: Carlene Firmin (Principal Adviser, Office of the Children’s Commissioner; Trish O’Donnell (Development Manager, NSPCC; Pragna Patel (Director, Southall Black Sisters); Christine Hamilton-Giachritsis (Assistant Director Centre for Forensic and Criminological Psychology, University of Birmingham) and Jacqui Jensen (Director of Children’s Services, Birmingham City Council).
The recent revelations of sexual abuses by high profile public figures such as Jimmy Saville, Cyril Smith, and Stuart Hall have raised concerns about of a culture of abuse in some of our most respected public institutions, the failure of public agencies to listen to and protect young people and abuses of power. By contrast, the coverage of ‘paedophile gangs’ in Oxford, Rochdale and other northern towns have focussed on issues around race and ethnicity. In both situations it seems that the ‘voices’ of survivors of abuse have been ignored, challenged or even dismissed.
The workshop will explore the way these issues are conceptualised, and provide a space wherein the academic, policy and practitioner communities can bring insights to these challenging debates. We are keen to attract interest across a range of academic, policy and practitioner disciplines to reflect the way that claims of sexual abuse have been reported across a range of public spheres from the world of television, music schools and sports. We hope that by bringing people together from across a wide range of spheres we can begin to develop inter-disciplinary perspectives to better understand these issues.
The workshop will be of interest to people working in the field of social policy, social work, sociology, sports science, public policy, health care, criminology, local government, media studies etc. We are particularly keen to hear from early career academics, policy makers, practitioners and PhD candidates. The workshop will explore the following themes:
• What is the nature of public/private discourses around these abuses and how are issues debated, ignored or inflamed across the media, public policy and the world of practice?
• How do conceptions of power, class, race, gender, sexuality and age operate to influence differential power relations?
• How can the academic, policy and practitioner communities contribute insights to these issues?
We are keen to receive abstracts which address one or more of these themes. Your title and abstract should be no more than 400 words and should be sent to Surinder Guru at [log in to unmask] by 21 June. We will notify you of our decision by 2 July.
Those selected will be asked to present a 10 minute paper We will be putting out a call for fully written papers in the autumn and are currently in discussion with publishers about special edition journal and/or edited book. We look forward to hearing from you.
All the best
Surinder Guru and Ricky Joseph
Institute of Applied Social Studies
University of Birmingham
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