Symposium on a marginalised topic of “Reporting Child Sexual Abuse (CSA): A Cross-National Study of Impacts of Socio-Legal Culture and Intersectionality in India and the UK” funded by the Reid Research Fund from Royal Holloway, University of London, on 18-19 June 2024 at the Senate House.

Dr. Shailesh Kumar (Lecturer in Law), Dr. Sushri-Sangita Puhan (Lecturer in Social Work), Prof. Ravinder Barn (Professor of Social Policy), and Prof. Anna Gupta (Professor of Social Work) from the Department of Law and Criminology successfully organised a two-day symposium on a marginalised topic of “Reporting Child Sexual Abuse (CSA): A Cross-National Study of Impacts of Socio-Legal Culture and Intersectionality in India and the UK” funded by the Reid Research Fund from Royal Holloway, University of London, on 18-19 June 2024 at the Senate House. The event was inaugurated by Prof. Ravinder Barn, the Head of the Department of Law and Criminology. There were 6 thematically organised sessions with 31 presentations and around 40 speakers. All sessions were chaired by researchers and academics to manage the session and provide constructive feedback to the presenters.

There were five distinguished speakers: Laxminarayan Nanda (Child Protection Specialist, UNICEF Assam, India), Anna Gupta (Professor of Social Work, Royal Holloway, University of London), Vanisha Jassal (Senior Lecturer, University of Kent), Prita Jha (President & Founder, Peace and Equality Cell, India), and Madhumita Das (Psychologist & Acting General Secretary, Indian Council for Child Welfare, India). Laxminarayan, Prita and Madhumita shared their groundwork practitioner insights, socio-legal and criminological understanding, and experiences of working on child sexual abuse cases in India. Anna and Vanisha shared their academic insights respectively from social work and a narrative inquiry perspective into experiences of South Asian victims/survivors living in Britain. Prof. Barn and the guest speakers expressed their happiness to see so many researchers working in the field of child sexual abuse and appreciated the organisers to build this platform. They also encouraged the participants to come together and collaborate with the department by building a sustained network of researchers and publish high quality research works.