Finding their voices: Using poetic expression to narrate survivor stories of intimate partner violence (IPV) in regional Australia

This PhD – 'Finding their voices: Using poetic expression to narrate survivor stories of intimate partner violence (IPV) in regional Australia’ – explores the lived experience of IPV through ethnographic and auto-ethnographic lenses. Methodologically, ethnography produces a multiplicity of narratives – a ‘thick description’ – with the researcher journeying with those being person being studied to explore the lived experiences (Geertz, 1973). Auto-ethnography – literally self-ethnography – is a form of autobiographical narrative exploring the researcher’s subjective experience (Chang, 2008; Muncey, 2010). To help bound this research project, the focus will be on survivors of IPV living in regional, rural and remote Australia. It is known that rurality may increase the risk of IPV, especially with geographic isolation (Campo & Tayton, 2015). Adding to this, COVID-19 may have created a perfect storm for IPV through social isolation (Campbell, 2020). Creativity is a conduit through which to deal with trauma, whether first-hand, vicarious or secondary in nature. Poetry and poetic expression can be valuable in addressing the range and depth of traumatic experiences (Mazza, 2012). Virtual communities are emerging as spaces in which participants can be consumers of information, or prosumers (Toffler, 1980), meaning that they are both able to produce content and consume information from others in and around their experiences of IPV. Some virtual communities foster the opportunity to use poetry as the form of expressive creativity. For those who have the confidence to post their creative outpourings publicly, one such example can be found on the ‘Hidden Hurt’ website http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/domestic_violence_poems_1.html Being able to tell the story is part of the journey to recovery, yet it can be difficult to put into words (Abidila, 2018). For those who struggle with this, researchers can use poetic representation (Richardson, 1997) as a means of presenting IPV survivor stories. This entails the researchers writing up the interview transcripts in a poetic form, articulating new and powerful representations of survivors’ voices. In summary, this research examines IPV survivor stories through poetic contributions or the poetic representation of their stories to foster personal agency (Benight & Bandura, 2004) in trauma recovery. The aim is to interview survivors and invite poetic contributions and/or transcribe their stories through poetic representation. IPV survivors as research participants will be interviewed; poetic representations invited or created based on their interview transcripts; and then re-interviewed following the finalisation of the poetic representation to see what the benefits were in the process. There is also the potential to create a co-created or collective poetic representation with the participants. The anticipation is that this study could provide a significant contribution to the IPV research field, through providing opportunities for survivor agency, and for the reframing of societal perceptions and policy. The main research questions are: • What are the personal benefits gained in using poetry to find voice for survivors of intimate partner violence? • What are the personal benefits gained through the poetic representation of the stories of survivors of intimate partner violence? • What are the personal benefits of co-created or collective poetic representation for survivors of intimate partner violence? The successful doctoral candidate will be invited to publish with the two doctoral supervisors. He/she will be the lead author on such publications.