In this talk, I examine women's descriptions of navigating sexually violent experiences in ways that counter social (and possibly internalized) expectations, ways that are often met with disbelief, and that only some have recognized as strategic instead of as consenting or deceptive. ​ This presentation formed part of a two-day private symposium that also involved two public lectures. The private symposium also included presentations by Lise Gotell, Jennifer Koshan, Cressida Heyes, and Paige Gorsak. Also in attendance were Elizabeth Sheehy and Sunny Marriner who offered the first of the public lectures, and Ann J. Cahill, who offered the second of the pubilc lectures.

Presentation delivered at the Regulation of Sexual Violence Symposium. September 2019. Edmonton, AB.

Sexual violence and its prevention are issues that are understood and managed often very differently by the varied agencies and institutions that respond to it (Hamby and Grych, 2013). Differences between social work, police, healthcare, medical, and legal professionals — and the silos they often work in — become pronounced for people who have been sexually assaulted by other people. The disjunctures between these groups can worsen the already challenging plight of those having to navigate these complex systems (Murphy, Banyard, Maynard and Dufresne, 2011). In these ways, the harms of sexualized violence are compounded by a system that cannot or does not attend to the subtle ways in which it facilitates further experiences of violence. Our participatory research community aims to reduce this kind of systemic violence. I present preliminary outcomes of an ongoing study that works against these nuanced manifestations of violence by bringing together professionals from across the spectrum of sexual violence agencies and institutions to engage in cross-disciplinary conversation, community-building, and collaboration. I describe the unconventional learning activities and multi-level data generation methods this community of diverse and skilled professionals engages in, and the powerful and unanticipated discoveries that are emerging as our time together unfolds.

Presentation delivered at the 53rd Annual Conference of the Canadian Sociological Association. June 2019. Vancouver, BC.

In recent years, sexual assault has received unprecedented attention and garnered widespread public interest. As a result, social awareness about sexual violence is ever increasing, as is public scrutiny of its sometimes problematic handling at institutional levels. One of the most widely cited reasons for institutions’ troubling responses to sexual violence are silos — institutions working on the same issue, but in isolation, detached from and uninformed by one another. Calls for response and remedy to this problem come have come from community, government, and academics alike. In this talk, I present preliminary outcomes of transformative research I lead with a group of professionals working in sexual violence across the agency and institutional spectrum (e.g., social work, policing, health care). In this participatory research group, professionals in working in different cultural and disciplinary capacities gather, and through a variety of facilitated exercises, engage in cross-disciplinary conversation, community building, and collaboration. One of our overarching objectives in this work is to collectively envision transdisciplinary training and education opportunities. I outline some of the unconventional activities and the multilevel data generation methods that our group engages in, and the insights and offerings we are collectively producing. In this powerful work in which we question the taken for granted, we enliven the sociological notion of making the familiar strange, yielding transformative discoveries as a result.

Alumni Presentation delivered at the Sociology Graduate Student Research Symposium. March 2019. Calgary, AB.

Sexual assault is a social issue that has generated mounting attention in recent years, in the general public and on post-secondary campuses where it is said to be perpetrated by people at epidemic rates. This attention has prompted increased social scrutiny upon institutions tasked with handling it such as law enforcement, nursing, and counselling, and between these institutions and campus management of sexual assault-related issues. This work reflects a preliminary exploration of ideas about how to bring these groups that have historically functioned in silos alongside one another into conversation and collaboration about sexual assault - a subject that all bear valuable knowledge about. The grounding framework for these exchanges is inspired by Palmer's (1998) "community of truth" whose subject or "connective core" - in this case, sexual assault - brings together various "knowers" into a "passionate and disciplined process of inquiry and dialogue" (pp. 103-104). Members of these groups, or knowers about sexual assault will be invited assemble regularly to engage in facilitated active learning exercises that encourage multi-, cross-, inter-, and transdisciplinary understandings of sexual assault. SoTL concepts such as "signature pedagogies" and "threshold concepts" will be introduced early, to invite participants to contemplate the foundational and essential concepts involved in how they describe sexual assault to others, and the central tools and approaches they use when 'doing' these descriptions. On the whole, the aims of this project are threefold: first to facilitate and promote cross-disciplinary and cross-experiential dialogue; second, to catalyze small-scale collaboration that builds into larger collaborative efforts; and third, to foster a collective imagining of transdisciplinary training and research objectives.

Poster presentation delivered at the 14th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. October 2017. Calgary, AB.

In my research that analyzes talk about men’s perpetration of sexual violence against women, I examine the discursive work that gets done in descriptions of sexual assault, victims, perpetrators, and who is to blame for it as well as how it should be prevented. I discuss how men who perpetrate sexual violence against women often escape blame or accountability for it, while the women against whom men perpetrate sexualized violence are instead positioned as partially or wholly responsible for failing to prevent it. How is this paradoxical practice - blaming women for the violence that men do to them - sustained? In this presentation, I provide an example of talk in which this practice is legitimated and offer an analysis of the nuanced discursive work that is involved in so doing. I argue that close readings of talk of this sort create significant opportunities to attend to the implications that flow from such constructions of sexual assault, and therefore also allow us to reconsider how we talk about men’s perpetration of sexualized violence against women.

Presentation delivered at the 50th Annual Conference of the Canadian Sociological Association. May 2016. Calgary, AB.

Acts of sexual violence are, and have historically been, crimes largely perpetrated by men, against women. Notably, however, sexual violence prevention strategies are, and have historically been, largely directed at women. As such, women are positioned as responsible for preventing sexual violence and as partially to blame for the sexual violence men perpetrate against them. This presentation critically engages with these contemporary sexual assault prevention/risk management discourses, and takes up how said prevention messages can serve to reify rape mythology, represent common forms of sexual violence as inevitable and deferrable, locate male perpetrators ‘beyond the pale,’ and, construct women against whom sexual violence is perpetrated as foolish, failed managers of obvious risk.

Presentation delivered at the Sociology Graduate Student Research Symposium.. March 2012. Calgary, AB.

This research is about the social implications of representing sexual assault in entertainment media. The purpose of this research is to develop in-depth understandings about the role that these media play in helping perpetuate and challenge the “social inevitability” of sexual assault. This research is informed by dialogue with frontline sexual assault response teams (including nurses, counselors, and police officers), analyses of select entertainment media examples, and by critical sexual assault and media research. This work takes up questions such as: What messages about male and female interaction, consent, and sexual assault do these media communicate? How is entertainment media implicated in victim, perpetrator, and social understandings of sexual assault? How can this research inform social and professional practice? Application of this work is therefore both broad and specific. It is broadly relevant to all those whose lives are directly or indirectly affected by sexual violence; and, specifically applicable to industry personnel, including, but not limited to: health care providers, social workers, criminal justice practitioners, media producers, and policy makers. Through the use of tangible examples and popular media references, this dynamic and informative evidence-based presentation will demonstrate how collaboratively built, multidisciplinary understandings about sexual assault in (and as) entertainment media can lead to increased critical awareness about this pervasive social issue.

Presentation delivered at the Alberta Graduate Council Conference. May 2011. Calgary, AB.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is a fictional primetime crime drama that has received both popular and critical acclaim for its “avowed focus on sexual assault” (Cuklanz & Moorti, 2006). The series follows New York City Special Victims Unit detectives and district attorneys as they pursue, apprehend, and prosecute criminals involved in “sexually-based offenses.” Now airing its eleventh season, SVU is NBC’s most popular fictional crime drama, and it is more popular than the original Law & Order series, the longest running crime drama in television history. It is a series that is heralded for its “realistic” and “ripped from the headlines” anchoring in “real life events,” its research-substantiated storylines, and in the commendations it receives for its tackling of social issues. While its unique focus upon sexual assault indeed sets it apart from other primetime crime dramas, this study asks whose “realities,” what bodies of research, and whose commendations does the series and its success reflect when it comes to representing rape in/as primetime entertainment media? I argue that this popular, far-reaching, sexual offense-centered media platform is a rich research site that generates discussion and debate around representations of sexual assault in entertainment media.

Presentation delivered at the 62nd Annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology. November 2010. San Francisco, CA.