The Trauma-Centred Study Group brings together PGRs, ECRs, alumni, and faculty from across King's College London as well as other London-based universities to explore trauma as both a tool of analysis within our research and a tool of self-reflection for ourselves as researchers. The TCSG facilitates routine dialogue through discussion-based sessions, workshops, and public lectures and offers a creative space for collaboration and innovative thinking among researchers about the visibility of trauma as a concept, methodology, and informed practice within our research, curricula, and policy-making spheres.

 

Bridging the 'Professional' & the 'Personal'

The TCSG begins from the premise that the boundaries between our 'professional' and 'personal' experiences as researchers are rarely clear cut. The TCSG offers both a platform and a safe space for researchers to share their experiences, perspectives, and concerns about the role of trauma within their respective research journeys. In doing so, this study group fosters and elevates dialogue on an issue studied and experienced by countless researchers working on sensitive and emotionally-demanding topics. We collaborate with various organisations such as the Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma to bring clinical and behavioural science perspectives to our sessions and workshops. 

 

Training & Knowledge Transfer

The TCSG explores trauma-informed methods and tools from a wide range of perspectives. Working with those who have survived varying degrees of trauma is a delicate dynamic that requires researchers to consider a range of safeguarding mechanisms, from ethics applications to trauma-informed research methods, in order to protect the human subjects involved in our research. Such practices can help researchers create a safe space for interviewing those who have experienced combat, violence, and/or large-scale destruction. Similarly, trauma-informed practices can provide a framework for researchers to make sense of the silences, of what is not being said, and the impact of trauma on one’s memory. The TCSG offers researchers training opportunities, tips, and strategies for strengthening trauma-informed research practices. 

 

Storytelling, Narrative Sovereignty, & Self-Reflection

Immersive study in trauma-related and -effected topics can also take a serious mental and emotional toll on the researchers themselves. In this sense, trauma-informed research approaches are also self-reflective on the challenges that researchers may face when working with trauma survivors and/or archival records of systemic violence, conducting fieldwork in post-conflict zones, or even of being a trauma survivor themselves after experiencing violence, displacement, or discrimination. The TCSG embraces storytelling and narrative sovereignty as mediums and practices for teaching and learning through lived experience.

 

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