Centre for Culturally Resonant Domestic Violence Responses

The Centre for Culturally Resonant Domestic Violence Responses advances interdisciplinary, community-engaged research and practice focused on domestic violence in religious, ethnic minority, and migrant communities. Based within the Institute of Domestic Violence, Religion & Migration (IDVRM), the Centre specialises in designing robust, culturally grounded, and faith-sensitive research that responds to the lived realities of underrepresented populations and supports the development of effective, contextually embedded interventions.

The Centre is grounded in the recognition that domestic violence is experienced, understood, disclosed, and addressed differently across cultural, religious, and migration contexts, and that standardised or culturally generic service and response models often fail to reach or adequately support survivors in minority and migrant communities. By centring community knowledge, religious worldviews, and local social infrastructures, the Centre seeks to strengthen domestic violence responses that are both culturally resonant and institutionally integrated within local and national response systems.

Building on the pioneering work of Project dldl/ድልድል, the Centre co-creates data-driven domestic violence responses with communities, faith actors, and service providers. Through this work, the Centre aims to reduce barriers to disclosure and support, improve survivor safety and wellbeing, and contribute to more inclusive, equitable, and effective domestic violence policy and practice.

As a Centre, we are especially interested in:

Promoting religio-cultural sensitivity across domestic violence response systems, particularly within the UK, through collaborative engagement with regulatory bodies, statutory and generalist services, and ‘by and for’ community organisations.
Scaling and adapting the Project dldl/ድልድል Model® to conduct ethically grounded research on domestic violence in underrepresented and underserved communities, including populations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, with the aim of informing culturally responsive service provision.
Exploring novel, sustainable, and scalable models of culturally resonant and faith-informed domestic violence support, including community-based, hybrid, and systems-level approaches that bridge formal services and informal support networks.
Strengthening community capacity and practitioner competence through training, co-learning, and knowledge exchange with frontline workers, faith leaders, and community advocates engaged in domestic violence prevention and response.
Contributing to policy-relevant evidence and practice innovation that challenges one-size-fits-all approaches and advances survivor-centred, intersectional, and culturally embedded domestic violence interventions.