Lynne Cairns

The motivation for Lynne’s PhD stems from my experience of over twenty years of Social Work practice with children and young people in the field of child abuse including Harmful Sexual Behaviour. Her PhD study, supported by ESRC, is supervised by Professor Simon Hackett and Dr Josie Phillips (Durham), will develop understanding of the social contexts of boys who have displayed Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB) to better understand how their behaviours are shaped sociologically and contextually. Looking beyond individual characteristics, which has been the dominant focus of research to date, she aims to understand how the interplay within and between social contexts enhances safety, risk, harm and the realisation of Rights in the lives of boys. Utilising principles of Participatory Action Research (PAR), young men who have in the past been denied a voice in social research will be actively involved in the co-production of new knowledge.

She is collaborating with Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU) to strengthen engagement and participation and maximise impact given the Scottish Government’s call for social change on the issue of HSB (2020). She hopes to contribute to the development of contextually sensitive, Rights respecting preventative strategies to reduce sexual violence by young people.