Postgraduate researchers
Read about the experiences of postgraduate students at CEEUPS, and their PhD projects.
Provisional thesis title: Silent Struggles: A mixed methods exploration of how trauma and organisational strain shape emotion, decision-making and behaviour in UK police officers.
Research summary
My PhD research is comprised of four research studies:
- Cross-sectional survey (n=307) using mediation analysis, multiple and logistic regression analyses to explore the role of trauma and dissociation as a coping mechanism with negative emotional experiences and misconduct.
- Semi-structured interviews (n=8) using interpretive phenomenological analysis to understand the emotional landscape in UK policing.
- Longitudinal audio diaries (n=36) using a hybrid narrative-template analysis to explore the role of trauma and emotion in police decision-making and behaviour.
- Longitudinal survey (n=57) using mediation analysis, multiple and logistic regression analyses to explore the role of trauma and dissociation as a coping mechanism with negative emotional experiences.
Why this research matters
- Climate of consistent poor mental health and wellbeing outcomes for police officers including; anxiety, depression, burnout, compassion fatigue, PTSD.
- An enduring and resistant police culture grounded in a masculine ethos which implicitly perpetuates emotional silencing.
- Trauma and emotions significant impact on an individual's decision-making and subsequent behaviour.
- Police leaders are constantly under pressure to improve officer wellbeing and reduce misconduct.
What inspired this research
As a member of the police family, I have vicariously understood the struggles police officers face in the present of cumulative trauma exposure, high workload demands, and cultural pressures. This led me to conduct my MSc thesis (2020) on the relationships between compassion fatigue and burnout with anxiety and depression in UK police officers, which is whereby passion really grew for research into police wellbeing.
I care deeply about supporting those who protect us, and hope to aid organisational leaders and policy makers in improving working conditions and ultimately their officers' wellbeing.
Provisional thesis title: Police culture surrounding non-contact sexual offending (NCSO).
Research summary
The purpose of this research is to explore how police culture shapes, and is shaped by, officers’ attitudes towards and response to NCSO.
Why this research matters
NCSOs (e.g., sexual exposure, voyeurism, upskirting) are among the most prevalent forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG) and yet also tend to go under-reported, under-investigated, and under-researched. These findings will contribute towards understanding how cultural and institutional norms may lead to a dismissive police response, even when individual officers indicate that they take these crimes seriously.
What inspired this research
This research was inspired by the growing recognition that VAWG is not simply the result of a few 'bad apples' but is enabled by wider social norms and cultures that tolerate misogyny. The trivialisation of NCSO both reflects and reinforces these social norms and cultures, which is what motivated further exploration into this topic.
Provisional thesis title: Narratives of Military Migration and Policy in the United Kingdom: a Decolonial Analysis.
Research summary
This research is a decolonial narrative analysis of immigration policy in comparison with stories of the experience of Foreign and Commonwealth/non-UK nationals who come to the UK to join the Armed Forces, or to join family members who work for the UK military.
Why this research matters
The UK has a long history of building a strong colonial presence around the globe, which was not completely dismantled with the formal end of the Empire.
Much evidence of the reminiscent colonial structures can be found in our everyday lives, especially in the lives of migrants from the former colonies, who are still suffering the consequences of Empire. This can be observed in the immigration policy narrative and in the experience of military migrants, who are recruited from the former colonies to serve in the UK Armed Forces and have found significant difficulties in guaranteeing basic rights such as family life, housing, and pensions.
This research aims to make that correlation between colonialism and the inequities faced by this population, and to propose efficient measures to achieve equity between military migrants and native British military families.
What inspired this research
As a migrant from Brazil in the UK, I have always felt uneasy with the inequities faced by migrants, especially the ones from the Global South. Ever since I moved here, in 2020, I have suffered a lot of injustices that puzzled me as to why they still happen to this day and age, and what can be done to provide reparations to all of us.
One way I found to do this was by researching the experience of military migrants, which is directly related to the colonial history of the UK and therefore can provide an effective way of pursuing change to wider sectors of the migrant community.