Dr Molly Ackhurst BA (Hons), MA, PhD, PGCert, FHEA

Lecturer in Criminology

VAWGRN – Violence Against Women and Girls Research Network
Abolition Feminism for Ending Sexual Violence Collective
SHAME – Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters
LEX Network – Law, Gender and Sexuality
FGEN –Feminist Gender Equality Network

Molly’s research agenda and work explores both the real world alternatives to the criminal legal system for survivors of sexual violence, as well as the blockages to implementing these changes. Moreover, in sitting at the intersections of feminist work on sexual violence, critical sociological work on knowledge production specifically within qualitative methodologies, and cultural work on the political nature of affect her work also encompasses a wide range of topics such as political change, punishment, engagements with the state and critical policy work.

At this point in time her primary research focus is the affective dimensions of feminist politics around sexual violence and justice. This focus is encapsulated in her PhD thesis – which makes the argument that there is a state of stuckness, shaping contemporary feminist sexual violence politics and work when it comes to the topic of justice. Defined by a need to move forward and enact change to get justice, whilst simultaneously being unable to do so, this work argues that the way this stuckness manifests varies across different bodies and objects. In making these claims Molly has undertaken discursive work with critical feminist academic texts, and innovative qualitative work combining collage making and unstructured interviews with frontline sexual violence workers and service users with experiences of homelessness.

Online Publications

Ackhurst, M. and Jarvis, F., 2020. “I’m So Triggered”: The cultural co-option of PTSD. Gay Magazine.
Podcasts

‘Sexual Violence and Abolition’, 2023. Surviving Society Presents: The Role of Love in Social Justice Work (an interview with Ez Chigbo)

Articles

Ackhurst, M. (in publication). Collaging Carceral Entrapments and Reorienting to the Imagination. Feminist Review.

Ackhurst, M., 2019. Everyday moments of disruption: Navigating towards utopia. Studies in Arts and Humanities, 5(1), pp.115-128.

Book Chapters

Ackhurst, M., Ah-fat , A., Brazzell, M, Caulfield, L., Kim, M. Meiners, E., Mohamed, K., Shirley, L., and Mannoe, M. 2022. Mapping the Networks: An Opening Roundtable on Transnational Transformative Justice’, in Bierria, A., Caruthers, J., and Lober, B., Abolition Feminisms: Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice, Haymarket, Chicago.

Ackhurst, M., Brazzell, M., Day, A., Tomlinson, K. and Rodrigues Fowler, Y. 2022. Creative and Transformative Approaches To Justice, in Brown, J. and Horvath, M. Rape: Challenging Contemporary Thinking Second Edition, Routledge, London.

Book Reviews

Ackhurst, M., 2020. Me Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism: by Alison Phipps, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2020, 205 pp.,£ 12.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-5261-4717-2.

Reports

Ackhurst M., and Starling, J., 2020. A Resource Kit for Teen Girls Interrupting Sexual Harassment in their Schools and Communities’, LevelUp

Selected Invited Talks, Lectures and Conference Papers

• 2024  Speaking out about sexual violence: The politics of voice, victimisation and recognition post-#MeToo, BSC, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland (roundtable discussion with Dr Bianca Fileborn, Dr Rachel Loney-Howes, Dr Tully O’Neill and Dr Tanya Serisier).
• 2024Feminist Entanglements and the State of Stuckness: The Tensions, and Possibilities, of Abolition in Feminist Sexual Violence Work, Oxford University (in discussion with Eleanor Whittingdale).
• 2022 ‘Policing & Gender’, Crime, Harm and Justice Research Group Conference: Policing in Crisis? Policing and Resistance in the 21st Century, LSBU, London, UK.
• 2022, ‘Reflections of the Feminist Imagination’, SCCJR Symposium: Imagined Futures and Utopian Methods, Glasgow
• 2022 Investigating the Impasse: Stuckness, the Sexual Violence Sector and “Justice”, Law Gender and Sexuality (LEX) Network and the Violence Against Women and Girls Research Network Conference: (Re)Connecting on Gender Based Violence, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
• 2022 Circular feelings, Circular stories, Circular solutions: Tracing the Stuckness Within Frontline Sexual Violence Worker Justice Stories and Narratives of Work‘, Law and Society Association Annual Conference, ISCTE University, Lisbon, Portugal.
• 2022 The Productive Character of Carcerality: How are carceral logics producing and shaping critical feminist approaches to sexual violence?, SLSA, York University, York, UK. (with Nic Aaron – co-presenter)
• 2021 Transforming Justice? Gendered Violence and Abolition, New Voices in Global Justice Research Series, Goldsmiths University [online] (with Noush Haghdadi – co- presenter)
• 2021 Carceral Feminism in the UK: Interrogating Our Investments, SLSA, Cardiff University, UK.
• 2020 Crime, Punishment and Feminism: Exploring Feminist Investments in Prisons and Carceral Politics, Good Night Out Project: Good Night In Series, [online].
• 2019 Interrogating the Carcerality in the English Sexual Violence Sector, Transnational Transformative Justice Panel, National Women's Studies Association, (NWSA) Conference, San Francisco, CA.