Maéva Thibeault she/her

Working title of PhD: Living Histories of Transformative Justice: An Exploration of Community Responses to Sexual Violence in Spain

Institution: University of Edinburgh

Part or full time: Full time

Year Commenced: 2023

PhD Supervisors: Sharon Cowan and Steve Kirkwood

Funding: University of Edinburgh

Synopsis:

My PhD thesis investigates transformative justice in cases of sexual violence in the Spanish context. Transformative justice is a community-based approach to violence that aims to ensure the safety, agency, and healing of survivors and to hold perpetrators accountable for the harm done.

Simultaneously, it works to transform the social structures that create, perpetrate, and legitimise cycles of violence.

Using a methodology of feminist ethnography and feminist oral history, my project explores

1. how practitioners’ experiences of transformative justice in response to sexual violence have shaped the collective history of Spanish grassroots communities,
2. how these communities practice transformative justice today and
3. how these life stories can advance transnational efforts to develop collective and non-punitive forms of justice.

Keywords: Transformative justice, sexual violence, feminist methodology