The WEAVERs Project
The WEAVERs are a panel of survivors of violence against women.
The WEAVERs are a group of women who have experienced domestic, family violence and/or sexual violence and who play a role in ‘weaving’ lived experience into research and training at the University of Melbourne.
The group was established in 2016 by the Melbourne Research Alliance to End Violence against women and their children (MAEVe) with funding from Melbourne Social Equity Institute. It was formed to ensure that the voices of women and children who have experienced family violence shape the work of University researchers and the research agenda.
Since that time, the WEAVERs group has grown and victim survivors are involved as lived experience researchers and as victim survivor co-researchers on a range of co-designed research projects. The group has a particular focus on exploring ways to improve health sector responses to domestic, family, and sexual violence.
The WEAVERs have established their own guiding principles and values
Key frameworks that the WEAVERS have co-designed include the Family Violence Experts by Experience Framework and An Australian Framework for ethical co-produced research and evaluations.
Australian Framework for the Ethical Co-production of Research with Victim survivors
There has been increasing interest in exploring more participatory and co-produced research with victim survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence, however there has been little guidance publicly available to support this work within Australia or internationally. In order to address this gap, the University of Melbourne and World Health Organisation have supported the development of a Framework in an Australian context, which will form the basis for consultation in a broad range of regions internationally.
The Framework provides best practice principles and a set of resources to support researchers and victim survivors wanting to engage in co-produced research about intimate partner and sexual violence. It draws upon relevant existing guidelines and literature as well as previous work and experiences of the WEAVERs and University researchers who have been engaging in co-produced research together since 2016.
The Framework draft was developed by Lula Dembele, Fiona and Nina who are victim survivor co-researchers from the University’s WEAVERs group and Katie Lamb and Kelsey Hegarty from the University of Melbourne's Safer Families Centre. The project was jointly funded by the World Health Organisation and the University of Melbourne.
For any enquiries regarding the WEAVERs project, please contact:
Dr Katie Lamb
Research Fellow
Department of General Practice and Primary Care
klamb1@unimelb.edu.au