Resistance strategies and agency in adults who have experienced childhood domestic abuse

Disseminating the findings of an initial systematic literature review on how adults who experienced domestic violence and abuse (DVA) /Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) as children have been impacted upon specifically with a specific focus on resilience, creativity and agency. This presentation will outline a research project with 3 phases of study: a time and space study, a photo elicitation study and a case study. The time and space study will examine the creative use of space within aggressive and violence households experiencing IPV: how children have developed resistant strategies and agentic selves as a coping mechanism. The photo elicitation study intends to build upon the first study and capture this emergent self in pictorial form and finally the case study will examine experiences of siblings groups to violence and aggression. There is much literature on children’s experiences of DVA/IPV and how this has negative repercussions into adulthood for some (lack of educational attainment, mental health difficulties, broken relationships) but there is very little literature that attends to (adult) children as active survivors. This research intends to address some of this void