Gill Hague

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Emerita Professor Gill Hague (born 1945), Professor of Violence Against Women Studies, has been an activist and researcher for about 45 years on violence against women, both in the UK and internationally, taking a role since the early 1990s in developing activist-based research on the subject. She has produced more than 125 publications on gendered violence, including nine books (one in three editions), as well as short books, practice guides, activist manuals, action plans, reports, professional and scholarly papers, and book chapters.. She has also edited/written three collections of poetry.

In 1989/1990, she was one of the two founders, with Dr. Ellen Malos, of the Domestic Violence Research Group / Violence against Women Research Group, currently the Centre for Gender and Violence Research, at the University of Bristol, UK. This Centre conducts national, local and, international research on all forms of violence against women, and is one of the largest such dedicated centres in Europe and internationally. With a few others, it has been a pioneer in establishing feminist-based research on gender-based violence, aimed towards social change.

In 2013, Professor Hague was awarded a Special Life Prize for her life-time's work on violence against women by the Emma Humphreys Memorial Trust which awards the only national prizes on gender-based violence in the UK. In 2020, she was awarded a CBE for services on violence against women and support for survivors.

Biography

Hague was born in 1945 in London and grew up in Gravesend, Kent, UK. She lives in Bristol, UK, and has also lived in Canada (Montreal, Halifax and Wolfville), in Morocco, and in the US (including in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in New York).

Career

Starting off in the late 1960s in the women’s liberation movement and the left, Hague has been an activist in the movement against violence against women since the mid-Seventies, working in domestic violence refuges and as a campaigner, national trainer and lecturer.

She has worked in the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK, since 1989/1990, when she founded with Dr. Malos the Domestic Violence Research Group to work on domestic and sexual violence in an activist vein. The Group aimed to provide robust research evidence, initially, to support the work of the women’s movement against gender-based violence of the time. Later expanding to the Violence Against Women Research Group (2004) and renamed the Centre for Gender and Violence Research (2009), this Centre has taken a major role in national (UK) and international research on violence against women. Together with the closely related University of Bristol research unit, the Domestic Violence and Health Group, they now form one of the largest locations for gender violence research.

As Professor of Violence Against Women Studies and Professorial Research Fellow, Hague has contributed to establishing violence against women research as a practice and discipline. She has conducted, and frequently led, a wide variety of national and international research and action projects on gender violence, often working closely in collaboration with women’s organisations (for example, Women’s Aid, the national UK women’s charity working against domestic violence, and Mifumi, a leading Ugandan domestic violence project fighting for women’s and children's rights). Her 135 publications on gender violence include nine books and two Special Editions of the leading journal in the field, Violence Against Women, one award-nominated.

Many of these projects have been collaborations with other 'violence against women' activist researchers/research groups in a strategic attempt to avoid, where possible, academic competition. For similar reasons, various of Hague’s publications were written collaboratively with other activists and researchers. She has particularly contributed internationally to practical ways to conduct trans-national feminist-based research on violence against women from an activist stance, in partnership with women’s organisations and NGOs in the countries concerned, and attempting to avoid the imposition of Western ideas and dominance.

Hague has also worked for many years teaching and collaborating on anti-oppressive social work practice. In the 1970s, she worked in residential and community-based projects with young people in care or in trouble, developing experimental projects based on principles of shared responsibility, in a variety of NGOs, collectives, and local authorities. She has taught social work, social policy, women’s studies, sociology and childhood studies, variously at the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England in the UK, Smith College in the US, and Acadia University in Canada.

She retired from the University of Bristol in 2012, but continues to work on violence against women periodically.

Selected examples of international and national gender violence work

Many international studies which Hague has led have entailed liaising with national and local grassroots refuge/shelter organisations and activists (in e.g. South Africa, Iraqi Kurdistan, India, Mexico, Canada, the US, Malaysia and Uganda), with global bodies (e.g. the Council of Europe and the UN), and with the UK and other governments. Hague has also worked with gender violence activists and workers in a wide variety of countries, offering support in study for PhDs and to strengthen/establish the subject in the country concerned (e.g. in Bangladesh, Palestine, Brazil, China, Jordan), and in setting up (or attempting to set up) first-time pioneer projects on domestic violence in their countries (for example, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Libya).

Examples of Hague’s work, internationally, include an Action Plan on ‘Honour’-Based Violence and Killings in Iraqi Kurdistan, the first in the wider region within the Middle East. This Action Plan is based on a study (2007-2010) of violence in the name of so-called ‘honour' (HBV) in Kurdistan in the North of Iraq, conducted with Dr. Nazand Begikhani (Centre for Gender and Violence Research, University of Bristol) and Professor Aisha Gill (Roehampton University). They jointly produced a book on HBV in Kurdish communities in Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK, also the first of its type, named Honour-Based Violence: Experiences and counter-strategies in Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK Kurdish diaspora (2013).

In a second example (of many), Hague collaboratively led participatory action research in rural Uganda on bride-price (payment by men to the families of their wives on marriage) and its relation to domestic violence (2007-9). The researchers in this project were local people, engaging in participatory action with Dr. Ravi Thiara (Centre for the Study of Safety and Well-being, University of Warwick) and Hague, in collaboration with the Ugandan NGO, Mifumi. This project led to professional training, radio programmes, teaching sessions, campaigns and awareness-raising in Uganda. It contributed to the evidence which led to a historic ruling by the Ugandan Supreme Court in 2015, banning bride-price refund on separation or divorce.

In a third example, Hague’s international work includes the development of practical manuals on domestic violence (2002-6) for use as empowerment tools in impoverished communities and in schools in India, conducted with Nirmala Niketan, Bombay (Mumbai) with Drs. Lynn-Marie Sardinha, Helen Joseph and Mary Alphonse, and Malos.

Nationally, she directed with Dr. Malos key research in the 1990s on multi-agency approaches to domestic violence in the UK which led to practice and policy improvements in inter-agency work at the time.

Hague later led the only national UK study of disabled women and domestic violence, conducted with a team of disabled and non-disabled researchers, managed by Women’s Aid (England) and advised by an advisory group of disabled women. This study was the first of its kind nationally and gave rise to a range of practical impacts and policy developments. It led to a 2012 book with Dr Ravi Thiara and Professor Audrey Mullender (University of Qarwick, Ruskin College), Disabled Women and Domestic Violence: Responding to the experiences of survivors, and a Women's Aid campaign on behalf of abused disabled women. The project, action plan and book involved a collaboration with disabled movement activists, Brenda Ellis and Ruth Bashall.

Raising the voices of survivors of violence

A fundamental principle of this work has been to raise the voices of abuse survivors/victims so that these voices can be engaged in combating abuse. For example, Hague's work (with Professor Mullender and Dr. Rosemary Aris, University of Warwick) led to a book, Is Anyone Listening: Accountability and women survivors of domestic violence (2003), which helped to pioneer policy initiatives to involve survivors of domestic violence in policy and practice developments so that these developments are responsive to their voices and needs.

A study on children’s views and experiences of domestic violence, conducted collaboratively and led overall by Mullender (with Professor Liz Kelly and Dr. Linda Regan, London Metropolitan University, Dr. Umme Imam, University of Durham, and Dr. Malos) led to two books (Children’s Perspectives on Domestic Violence, 2002, and Stop Hitting Mum, 2004). Both were based on children’s own voices and views.

Hague’s project (with Claudia Wilson) on domestic violence in the UK from the Second World War till 1970 was published as a short book, The Silenced Pain, 1945 -1970, featuring the voices of women from this generation, often speaking out for the first time about their experiences of domestic violence at the end of their lives.

As a final example, one of her last books on violence against women raised the survivor voices of adults who had experienced domestic violence between their parents/carers in childhood. Written with Ann Harvey and Kathy Willis, this book, Understanding Adult Survivors of Domestic Violence in Childhood: Still forgotten, still hurting (2012) was one of the first to look at the enduring emotional impacts into adulthood, and brought together current research, best practice guidance for those working with both adults and children, poetry and personal testimonies

Poetry

Additional to her violence against women books, Hague’s poetry books include an edited collection of poems by women in Bristol (with Pat VT West and Shelley Allen, 1997), a poetry collection about relationships between women and their mothers (with Pat VT West. 2007) and a sole authored collection, Cirrus Clouds: Poems of Travelling and Social Justice, 2016, drawing on her international work on violence against women. Cirrus Clouds presents poems describing real-life experiences from countries around the world including Cuba, Iraqi Kurdistan, Uganda, South Africa, Greece, Mexico, India, and others, with themes of social justice, human and women’s rights, and people’s bravery and valour

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions

In 2011, the University of Bristol held a Festshrift for Professor Hague and Dr Malos, the founders of the Centre for Gender and Violence Research.

In 2013, Professor Hague was awarded a Special Prize by the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize for her life's work on violence against women, the only national prize in the UK for gender-based violence work.

See: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/people/gill-m-hague http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/research/centres/genderviolence/

In 2020, Professor Hague was awarded a CBE ifor her work on volence against women n the Queen's Honours List.

Bibliography

Books

Begikhani, Nazand; Gill, Aisha; Hague, Gill (2015). Honour-based violence: Experiences and counter-strategies in Iraqi Kurdistan and the UK Kurdish diaspora. Devon, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. ISBN 9781409421900 Search this book on ..

Hague, Gill; Harvey, Ann; Willis, Kathy (2012). Understanding Adult Survivors of Domestic Violence in Childhood: Still forgotten, still hurting. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ISBN 9781849050968 Search this book on ..

Thiara, Ravi; Hague, Gill; Ellis, Brenda; Bashall, Ruth; Mullender, Audrey (2012). Disabled Women and Domestic Violence: Responding to the experiences of survivors. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ISBN 9781849050081 Search this book on ..

Hague, Gill; Malos, Ellen (2005, 1998, 1993). Domestic Violence: Action for Change. Cheltenham: New Clarion Press. 3rd Edition ISBN 9781873797464 Search this book on ., 2nd Edition ISBN 9781873797235 Search this book on ., 1st Edition ISBN 9781873797068 Search this book on ..

Hague, Gill; Mullender, Audrey; Aris, Rosemary (2003). Is Anyone Listening? Accountability and women survivors of domestic violence. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415259460 Search this book on ..

Mullender, Audrey; Hague, Gill; Imam, Umme; Kelly, Liz; Malos, Ellen; Regan, Linda (2004). Stop Hitting Mum: Children talk about domestic violence. East Molesey, Surrey: Young Voice. ISBN 9781903456149 Search this book on ..

Mullender, Audrey: Hague, Gill; Imam, Umme; Kelly, Liz; Malos, Ellen; Regan, Linda (2002). Children’s Perspectives on Domestic Violence. London: Sage. ISBN 9780761971061 Search this book on ..

Harwin, Nicola; Hague, Gill; Malos, Ellen (1999). The Multi-Agency Approach to Domestic Violence: New Opportunities, Old Challenges? London: Whiting and Birch. ISBN 9781861770035 Search this book on ..

Poetry collections

VT West, Pat; Hague, Gill; Allen, Shelley (1997). Rive Gauche: Women poets writing in the 1990s in Bristol. Bristol: Rive Gauche Publishing. ISBN 0953037002 Search this book on ..

Hague, Gill; VT West, Pat (2007). What she also did was: Poems about our mothers. Bristol, Rive Gauche Publishing. ISBN 9780953037018 Search this book on ..

Hague, G ill(2016). Cirrus Clouds: Poems of travelling and social justice. Bristol: Tangent Books

References

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