Talking Research is a new podcast hosted by Asmita Sood that aims to make academic research on sexual violence accessible to a non-specialist audience. Asmita interviewed Erin about Project CURSV and some of her initial thesis findings. You can listen to the episode here; it’s also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Data Collection Update
Thank you to everyone who participated in Project CURSV. Data collection finished on June 28th, 2019 and transcription is well underway. A breakdown of participation is as follows:
English university staff: 13 interviews across 5 universities
American university staff: 13 interviews across 5 universities
English student reporters: 7 interviews
American student reporters: 12 interviews
Total conducted: 45 interviews
Watch this space for more updates as Project CURSV moves into the analysis and writing stages, and thank you again to everyone who made this project possible.
Project CURSV in the News
Erin wrote about the rationale behind Project CURSV and what she hopes to achieve through this research for the blog Women Are Boring. You can read the post, titled “University responses to sexual violence on campus: Comparing English and American approaches,” here.
Ethical Approval
Project CURSV has received full ethical approval from the University of York Department of Education’s Ethics Committee. To read the letter granting ethical approval to this project (formally titled US and UK university responses to student disclosures of sexual violence), click the link below.
UoY Educational Ethics Committee Approval
Student Recruitment: US Colleges & Universities
Project CURSV is recruiting current students who have experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence at universities based in the US for 1 hour interviews via Skype. These interviews will focus on what it was like to tell your university (or another party) about your experience of violence, what channels you reported to, and your thoughts on the effectiveness and supportiveness of the reporting process. All levels of university study and all genders welcome.
Erin will not be asking you to share your experience of harassment or violence. She will make the question list available to you in advance upon request if you are nervous about what she might ask or if you are unsure you’ll be able to answer as fully as you’d like on the spot.
Eligibility:
- You must be at least 18 years old
- You must be a current student or a recent (within 1 year) graduate of a college or university in the US who has experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence while studying there
- You must have told someone about your experience: preferably a university contact, but non-university disclosures (e.g. a friend, family member, counsellor, crisis centre) are also welcome
Erin will anonymize both you and your university, and you will have the chance to review the interview transcript before she works with it.
If you’d like to participate, please email erin.shannon@york.ac.uk with the subject line “Project CURSV Student Participation.”
Student Recruitment: English Universities
Project CURSV is recruiting current students who have experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence at universities based in England for 1 hour interviews via Skype. These interviews will focus on what it was like to tell your university (or another party) about your experience of violence, what channels you reported to, and your thoughts on the effectiveness and supportiveness of the reporting process. All levels of university study and all genders welcome.
Erin will not be asking you to share your experience of harassment or violence. She will make the question list available to you in advance upon request if you are nervous about what she might ask or if you are unsure you’ll be able to answer as fully as you’d like on the spot.
Eligibility:
- You must be at least 18 years old
- You must be a current student at an English university who has experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence while at university
- You must have told someone about your experience: preferably a university contact, but non-university disclosures (e.g. a friend, family member, counsellor, crisis centre) are also welcome
Erin will anonymise both you and your university, and you will have the chance to review the interview transcript before she works with it.
If you’d like to participate, please email erin.shannon@york.ac.uk with the subject line “Project CURSV Student Participation.”
Project CURSV’s Conference Debut
Erin will be presenting her work so far on Project CURSV at this year’s BAICE conference this Friday, September 14th. If you’re attending and interested in learning more about comparative approaches to studying sexual violence in universities, she’ll be on the Learning and Gender panel.
An Introduction to Project CURSV
This website serves as a hub for Erin Shannon’s Ph.D. thesis project in the Department of Education at University of York, Project CURSV (pronounced “cursive”): Comparing University Responses to Sexual Violence. Through this project, she is attempting to understand the response frameworks that exist in the US and England through a combination of feminist critical discourse analysis/policy discourse analysis and interviews with university staff and student victims/survivors.
This website will not contain any information about individual participants, their interviews, or the institutions that choose to participate in this project. It is intended only as a resource for prospective participants to better understand Project CURSV and keep people up-to-date about conference appearances or other media engagements. All data, including participants’ names, roles/titles, and university names, will be anonymised before it is included in the thesis, and Erin will be the only person able to access personal, non-redacted information.
Project CURSV 