‘Doing the right thing’? Histories of the Home and Domestic Violence’ Conference paper

For the Histories of Home Subject Specialist Network, 7th annual conference, Homes Under Pressure conference, to be held at the Geffrye Museum in London on Tuesday 31 March 2015, PSP co-director Kirsten will be presenting a paper ‘Doing the right thing’? Histories of the Home and Domestic Violence’, which will discuss archaeological studies of domestic violence. Co-director Debra may contribute slides on the psychotherapeutic perspective.  After the conference, we may be able to post the slideshow on this website. The abstract for the paper is as follows.

This paper explores the benefits and difficulties of household archaeologies of the recent and contemporary past, when studying or encountering historic situations of domestic violence. It introduces a proposed community project that aims to carry out archaeological research at a women’s domestic violence refuge in the East Midlands. Although principally analysing material culture, this study will also integrate a range of historical sources, including oral histories, and co-ethnographic accounts.

The paper aims to examine possible methodologies, and discuss the sensitive issues surrounding historical studies of domestic violence – particularly with regard to the prospect of investigating contemporary contexts, by commenting on a previous ground-breaking archaeological survey. It will explore how such studies might either (when awareness of the complexities of domestic violence is deficient) re-traumatise, or (in the case of more informed, co-operative, approaches) empower and support, domestic violence ‘survivors’; and consider the potential of participation by refugees in such projects to augment the process of social relationship and identity reconstruction.