Learning to Listen to Trauma Stories: Doing Research on Violence Against Women

Abstract

Doing research on violence and trauma is inextricably linked to emotion. The decision to research these topics is the decision to engage with some of the most disturbing, painful and terrifying aspects of human existence. As social scientists we are invited to construct ourselves as detached and unaffected, and our data as part of an objective scientific enquiry untainted by the emotions we are not supposed to have experienced. Most criminological work has ignored emotionality and has essentially seen it as epistemologically irrelevant (Code, 1993).