Locating Survivors’ Justice Needs in Post-secondary Responses to Sexual Violence

The last decade has been a period of renewed attention to, and action on, sexual violence on post secondary campuses. Amidst the new policies, programs and responses, we argue that missing from these changes has been critical reflection, research and understanding the problem complexly. In particular, there is a focus in post secondary institutions (PSI) on being “survivor centred” in their responses but very little empirical grounding for what survivors need or want in terms of responses. This is not an easy task as survivors of sexual violence have diverse needs that shift over time and place. This project aims to get a better understanding of the complex needs of PSI survivors and to test a new method for getting at the collective needs of survivors and for empowering survivors to contribute to responses. Using a conceptual framework that understands justice to be multifaceted our main research question is: What varied justice needs do those harmed by sexual violence have, especially in relation to responses on the part of students’ post-secondary institutions? This research project involves two methods of data collection. The first phase involves in-depth, semi-structed interviews with MacEwan students who have experienced some form of sexual violence. While it is important to provide survivors the space to speak to their needs as individuals, justice is a collective, social problem. In order to get at the sociality of justice the second phase of data collection will consist of several small interactive workshops.