Dr Leigh Downes

Professional biography

The overarching aim of my work is to document and honour the lived complexities, struggles of, and impacts on, survivors of violence who are marginalised by the criminal legal system and systemic oppression including: anti-authoritarian social movements, LGBTQI+ communities, racially minoritized groups, and sex workers. This constitutes a critical exploration of criminal justice, specialist sector and transformative justice responses to gender-based violence with particular attention to intersections of race, class, disability, gender, age and sexuality.

My current research areas:

• Feminist Anti-violence Imaginations: Rethinking British anti-violence movement histories. Ongoing archive-based research to examine definitions, debates and tactics that circulated in British feminist, women's, anti-racist and abolitionist movements against gender-based violence in 1970s and 1980s.
• Trans prisoner experience and gender incongruence in prison regimes in England and Wales: I am writing up research conducted at one men's prison with Dr. Abi Rowe based on interviews with 7 trans and non-binary prisoners, 3 cisgender prisoners and 7 cisgender prison staff members to explore how social processes, responses and reactions shape the lived experiences of trans prisoners.
• Trauma-informed and social justice approaches in teaching, learning and research: I was the PI of the FASSTEST scholarship project 'Towards Emotional Resilience: Supporting student learning of emotive and sensitive content' (our final report is available here on Scholarship Exchange). I continued this work as Co-I of Positive Digital Practices (Office for Students, Mental Health competition, 2021-23) and as the Emotional Resilience work-package lead (you can access our digital toolkit here). I have a particular interest in collaborating with others to imagine possibilities for trauma-informed and social justice approaches in violence and abuse studies.

My teaching interests span feminisms, critical race theory, queer studies, critical trans studies, abolitionist feminisms and transformative justice. Prior to the OU I have taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at various institutions including the University of York, Durham University, Birmingham University and the University of Leeds.

I have worked on modules such as DD305 Personal Lives and Social Policy, DD105 Introduction to Criminology and DD315 Researching Current Issues in Criminology. In the current year (23/24) I am working on two module teams in presentation: DD311: Crime, Harm and the State and DD105: Introduction to Criminology and one module in a production capacity DD315 Researching Current Issues in Criminology.

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy with a specific interest in trauma-informed learning.

PhD Supervision

I welcome PhD applications in the following areas:

•  violence, abuse and harm
•  grassroots activisms
•  informal and community responses to harm
•  survivor resistance, healing and recovery
•  trauma-informed praxis

Current and past postgraduate research students

• Loveness Mshipe-Williams. Assisting the unwanted: Intersections and impacts of the United Kingdom’s “hostile environment” in social work with migrant women and children experiencing domestic abuse. 2021-present.
• Shannon Martin. Decolonising the University: A Case Study of the Open University. 2020-present. APP-funded.
• Janice Knox-Goba. Sexual Violence Against Women: Law Reform and Perceptions of Practitioners in Sierra Leone. 2019-present.
• Kiran Nihalani. Reframing and Re-enacting Welfare: An empirical exploration of small-scale horizontal forms of 'help'. 2015-2020, Faculty funded.