http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/265 2026-04-14T21:39:06Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/31504 Title: Disrupting gender-related violence through youth work: A feminist new materialist enquiry Authors: Cooper-Levitan, Mika Neil Abstract: This thesis explores gender-related violence in youth work settings. Using a critical sociomaterial approach (Murris, 2020), the project investigated how gender-related violence affects young people, youth workers, and youth settings and how youth work disrupts gender-related violence as a form of primary educational prevention (Ellis and Thiara, 2014). The methodology used in this investigation was based on Critical Participatory Action Research (Kemmis et al., 2014). It unfolded in three phases in four youth work settings. Phase 1 focused on identifying gender-related violence and planning youth work interventions to tackle gender-related violence. Phase 2 involved implementing practice changes. During phase 3, these changes were sustained and evaluated. The data collected included critical incidents of practice (Fook and Gardner 2007), in-depth interviews and observations (Kemmis et al., 2014). The analysis comprises a Feminist New Materialist cartographic mapping of gender-related violence-youth work-assemblages. This draws from an ethological approach espoused by Fox and Alldred (2022) and Feely’s (2020) assemblage analysis to identify and describe how the sociomaterial components of the gender-related violence-youth work-assemblage affect one another through processes of de/re/territorialisation (Fox and Alldred, 2022). The findings show that gender-related violence has emotional, material, and social affects that regulate (territorialise) young people, youth workers, youth workplaces, and youth work things. The thesis also demonstrates how youth work that is founded on norm-critical, feminist, and queer pedagogy disrupts gender-related violence by producing opportunities for resistance and change. This thesis, therefore, builds on the GAP WORK Project (Alldred, David et al., 2014, Cooper-Levitan and Alldred, 2022) by demonstrating how youth workers put feminist, queer, and norm-critical praxis into practice. The significance of the vitality of the non-human as part of this critical praxis is illuminated. This is significant for youth work as it challenges the humanist foundations of both research and practice. Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/27911 Title: An exploration of the challenges encountered by muslim men in the UK: an Identity Process Theory (IPT) and masculinities approach on muslim men Authors: Karacan, Durali Abstract: Muslims constitute the second-largest and fastest-growing religious group in the UK. In the post-9/11 and 7/7 climate, existing research suggests Muslims in the UK encounter significant challenges in the form of discrimination, racism, and Islamophobia. Academic studies investigating the experiences of Muslim women from multiple perspectives have revealed that their lives are affected in a negative way by such challenges. Meanwhile, research into the difficulties confronting Muslim men has been minimal. Utilising intersectionality, Identity Process Theory (IPT - a socio-psychological approach to identity and identity threat) and Masculinities Theory, this study examines the challenges experienced by Muslim men from three distinct groups; i.e., Pakistani, Algerian and Somali. However, the aim of this research is not to draw broad conclusions about the challenges facing Muslim males in the UK; rather, the intention is to comprehensively represent the lived experiences of a cross-section of British Muslim men. Drawing on qualitative data elicited through in-depth individual interviews with 21 Muslim men from Pakistani, Algerian or Somali descent, this research illuminates the challenges that impact on their lives in the UK. The study reveals Muslim men’s various intersecting identities (Muslim, immigrant, man, black, low social class, etc.) exacerbate their difficulties, and that the experiences of Pakistani, Somali, and Algerian men differ. It further demonstrates that the challenges Muslim men face in the UK influence the various components of their identity, and their overall identity constructs. Notably, the challenges they encounter affect their motivational identity principles (continuity, self-esteem, self-efficacy, distinctiveness, belonging, meaning and psychological coherence), their masculinity identities (as father, breadwinner, family leader, protector, pride/honour in their hegemonic masculinity). It emerged that Pakistani men appear more settled in the UK and encounter relatively fewer challenges than those in other groups. By contrast, Somali men seem to have more challenges, with social class most frequently emphasised as one of their biggest. For Algerian men, issues mentioned focused more on their perceived masculinity identification. Interestingly, some of the second and third generation Muslim men interviewed reported not seeing a future for themselves in the UK, and shared plans to move to other countries such as Qatar or the UAE. Ultimately, the study suggests a socio-psychological approach to identity and identity threat (IPT), and masculinities approach could be utilised to clarify the issues affecting men in Muslim communities in the UK. Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/18249 Title: Unmaking madness: Exploring collective first-person epistemology Authors: Russo, Jasmina (Jasna) Abstract: This PhD research investigates the potential emergence of a new paradigm in understanding and approaching madness that is grounded in the first-person, collective knowledge of people who have personal experience of madness and who oppose its biomedical explanation. Unlike established participatory approaches in mental health and psychiatric research that involve experiential perspectives as subjective, add-on components, this inquiry takes first-person knowledge as a departure point and centers it throughout the research process. The notion of experiential knowledge in this thesis also extends to the researcher’s background. The emphasis is on the process of merging diverse first-person perspectives into a collective body of knowledge of madness that can offer a counter-discourse to the dominant, biomedical one. The investigation was undertaken in two main phases. In the first phase, I analysed a selection of written sources (conceptual, analytical and research work) authored by people who have first-person experience of madness and its treatment, and whose work challenges the biomedical paradigm. In the second phase, the analysis of written sources was used to generate questions for interviews with a subsample of the authors and activists from phase one. Fourteen people from six countries participated in this phase. Documenting the process of knowledge generation in these interviews is the central part of this inquiry. This thesis contributes to, and can be situated within Mad Studies, an emerging field of inquiry and activist scholarship. The overall approach is informed by the key values and principles of emancipatory disability research and, more specifically, by the key values and principles of survivor-controlled research in mental health. The research process is of equal importance to the findings. This thesis offers a methodological and ethical example of the value of solidarity, dialogue and working with difference whilst searching for connections and generating knowledge of complex human experiences. Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/17563 Title: Sanctuary versus business culture: Perspectives of service users and professional staff towards service user involvement at a UK hospice Authors: Findlay, Helen Abstract: AIM - To explore the perspectives of service users and professional staff towards service user involvement within the context of a changing cultural environment at a UK hospice. METHOD – Case study and thematic analysis including interviews with 16 staff including the CEO and 6 service users at a UK hospice. FINDINGS – Three overarching themes were identified: involvement and disempowerment in decision-making; belonging and alienation in a period of organisational change; struggle to maintain wellbeing and identity in a changing culture. A key finding is that service users receiving care from the hospice wanted their voices to be heard, valued and respected for their personal care and issues affecting the hospice. Service users did not consider it a burden to be asked for their views. They felt disempowered by a consultation process about organisational changes that appeared not to take their views on board. There is a need to consider whether a reliance on surveys for involving service users is sufficient or can become tokenistic. External social-political-economic pressures plus increasing privatisation of public services could influence the way that hospices operate in future. This could involve moving from a sanctuary to a business culture and potentially towards managerialism by adopting a regulatory rather than rights-based approach with an emphasis on increasing reach, measuring numbers and hitting targets. Service users being viewed as consumers with a focus on reablement/rehabilitation activities and less on psychosocial support could also serve to push hospices to start behaving more like hospitals. CONCLUSION – More qualitative research is needed to ensure the voices of service users living with a life-limiting illness are heard. The contributions they make towards co-production of services and research should also be heard and influence practice and policy. Service users should also be more involved in education and training of staff. Description: This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z