Caring for Survivors: Sexual Violence in Higher Education Institutions

A Public Lecture by Shivani Gupta, Visiting Faculty  at the Sciences Po Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics and Gender Studies Programme, Faculty Lecturer at the National University of Singapore College.

The mainstream social visibility of the #MeToo movement since 2017 has surfaced and verified the existence of sexual violence in various everyday spaces, which has shocked the world by becoming an ‘open secret’. It is a secret that plagues the world today and takes on a drastic turn within academic institutions. The lecture discusses rising cases of sexual violence in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the insensitive ways in which victims/survivors of sexual violence are implicated in the management of such cases. The talk will briefly delineate the reasons for sexual violence, premised on the relegation of the issue to the margins through social scripts and norms that make it difficult to centre it in mainstream discourses. These arguments will provide an entryway to the prime focus of the lecture that is to imagine, theorise and practise care for victim/survivors of sexual violence. Care is predominantly assumed to be a practise that is based on providing services and acting in ways that promote and ensure healing and well-being for those suffering from a certain ailment/health issue/trauma. Thus, care, or lack of it thereof, becomes axiomatic in understanding the prevalence of sexual violence as well as the mechanisms to counter it. The lecture will tend to methods of caring for victims/survivors of sexual violence that bring into its fold inclusivity, diversity, equality, and justice through a victim-survivor-centric approach to sexual violence.

Shivani Gupta's presentation will be followed by a discussion with Yara Mahfud (Assistant Professor, Institute of Psychology, Université Paris Cité), Victor Coutolleau (Postdoctoral Researcher, Sciences Po Gender Studies Programme) and Clara Le Gallic-Ach (Doctoral Researcher, Sciences Po Centre for Research on Social Inequalities - French Institute for Demographic Studies).

This event is part of the Visiting Faculty programme, which is implemented through the Université Paris Cité - Sciences Po partnership.

It will take place in the Amphithéâtre Lavoisier at Université Paris Cité, Campus Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris.