ESRC IAA 2023 - 2028 Rapid Action Funded Projects

Dr Imogen Jones 

School of Law, Faculty of Social Science 

Who and what is coronial death investigation for? 

When someone dies in unexpected or contentious circumstances, the coronial justice process is invoked. Across the England and Wales, coroners are not unified in approach, leading to variation in when autopsies and further investigations, the scope of investigations, and the production of prevention of future death reports. There is scant sense of overarching national purpose and minimal meaningful oversight.   

Existing research shows that there is increasing dissatisfaction amongst those who carry out autopsies, leading to a crisis in the number of pathologists willing to carry out coronial work. Moreover, the bereaved can suffer harm. This may be because, amongst other things, there are delays in their ability to dispose of a deceased person, or they are frustrated, and sometimes traumatised, by inquests and their outcomes.  

This project sees collaboration between academic researchers and key professionals such as pathologists, pathology technologists, lawyers and coroners to tackle the fundamental question of what the purpose of the modern coronial system ought to be. It will map what reforms are necessary to achieve this goal. The results of the project will be used to inform future policy development both by key professional organisations and government.  

Professor Ilias Trispoitus 

School of Law, Faculty of Social Science 

Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’: Legal and Policy Perspectives 

‘Conversion therapy’, a widely discredited set of practices which, according to the United Nations, aim to change or suppress LGBT+ sexualities or gender identities on the basis that those are inherently inferior, is not banned in UK law. That is even though there is incontrovertible evidence from the UK’s most eminent medical bodies and organisations, including the NHS, that all forms of ‘conversion therapy’, including non-physical forms of the practice (so-called ‘talking therapies’) can cause grave, lifelong harm – and that such ‘therapies’ do not work. The NHS prohibits health practitioners from offering or engaging in ‘conversion therapy’.  

This event brings together academics, legal and medical practitioners, policymakers, activists, MPs, and survivors of ‘conversion therapy’ to discuss two recent legislative initiatives to ban ‘conversion therapy’ in the UK; and, more broadly, why and how such practices should be banned in the UK. Although most UK political parties have committed to ban ‘conversion therapy’, and legislation is expected imminently, key questions about the scope and shape of a legal ban remain. This event showcases recently published research on the topic and aims to respond to the pressing policy opportunity to outlaw ‘conversion therapy’ in the UK in line with the recommendations of the United Nations and with legislative action in an increasing number of countries across the world.  

Dr Fozia Bora 

School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures 

A Somali Village in Colonial Bradford 

This project enables Bradford to mark the Somali Village, to speak to a range of new audiences: the UK Somali community; the multilingual Bradford community; the public at large visiting Bradford City of Culture 2025. Via this project, Bradford can build on self-critical responses in German provincial towns, addressing their colonial histories, e.g., the 2005 Oldenburg State Museum’s exhibition, “The Somali Village in Oldenburg 1905 – A Forgotten Colonial History”. We will tell the stories of these ‘Villagers’ by centring British Somalis in the public reinterpretation of this history and enabling the local art/culture scene to address the white ethnographic gaze and “looking back” as resistance. Somali voices, deeply obscured in colonial archives, speak back from the past through recovery of family and oral histories of the carwo (“people of the fair”), and co-create both the research and the cultural outputs. The project will generate impact through our collaboration with Bradford Made, telling hidden stories of the city for schoolchildren, and through the project’s co-creation of new Somali-led organisation, Somali Village, whose core mission is to ‘advance research, education, heritage, and artistic and cultural outputs relating to the history of the Somali diaspora…from the nineteenth century to the present day’.