Our Head of Research, Kerry Ellis Devitt, recaps a week of conferences and engagement to on research, ethics and collaboration. 

 

To say the last few months in my life have been busy is probably up there with such Trojan understatements as, ‘Do you think that massive wooden horse looks a bit suss?!’. But nonetheless, I come into this week feeling energised and inspired.

 

My year so far has largely been taken up with a chunky piece of research looking at the emotional demands of managing, and working in, an independent women’s Approved Premises. And as part of that, I have been preparing talks for two different annual conferences to share findings. I have also been engaged with thinking about, writing and relentlessly rehearsing a keynote address for another event. And because fate has quite the sense of humour, it just so happened that these occurred 436 miles apart, in three different cities, and all in the same week. (And if you saw me last week, I apologise as you almost certainly heard about it!). So rather than tackle the tag fest that would be my LinkedIn post, our Head of Communications made the excellent suggestion that a blog might be a better plan.

 

Conference 1: Research & Innovation Conference, University of Portsmouth (7-8 July 2026)

 

I was invited to be the Day 1 Keynote speaker by my former colleague, and Associate Head (for Research), Dr Craig Collie. The conference, Making Change: Impactful Research, Innovation and Creativity, focused on (as the title might subtly give away) creating meaningful impact with our work, and with a special focus on research promoting societal change and promoting public benefit.

 

I won’t lie when I say I spent more time than I meant to in trying to put together a meaningful keynote talk. I have been hugely uplifted by many wonderful keynotes over my academic career and so wanted to try and bring the same energy and passion. And for me, there was no other topic but ethics.

 

The audience, made up mainly of academics and post-graduate researchers from the arts, social sciences and creative and cultural industries, were a kind and patient audience, and I feel this was led right from the get-go by Professor Vikas Kumar, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, who reminded us about being kind to each other as speakers and delegates; understanding what it feels like to be vulnerable in our work. At that point by heart was performing an Olympic trampoline routine, so I especially appreciated this thoughtful opener!

 

My talk spoke of the need for researchers to move beyond purely procedural ethics to a more relational approach. As a career researcher, I am no stranger to getting through an ethics process, but over the last 5-10 years I have started to conceptualise ethics differently. I have seen myself moving from a purely transactional position; completing the ethics documents to gain ethical approval, to a more person-centred commitment. For example, undertaking research which focuses on relationships and practice rather than (just) procedure and compliance; placing participants as partners, experts and collaborators rather than ‘research subjects’; and seeing research ethics as something running throughout and beyond a project, not a substantive stage at the beginning. Reflecting on my use of creative methods in research (e.g., narrative inquiry, drawing tasks, pen-portraits and reflexivity), I considered the way that ethics should permeate not just how we plan our research, but how we think about it too. I ended with a reminder, perhaps mostly to myself, that people are not data. And as researchers, we must never forget this.

 

Conference 2: The National Approved Premises Association Annual Conference (NAPA CIC), Derby Conference Centre (8 July 2026)

 

Conference 2 took me from Portsmouth to Derby on Tuesday afternoon, ready to present on Wednesday morning to colleagues from the Independent Approved Premises estate.

Invited by Fiona Humphries, CEO of the fantastic Elizabeth Fry Charity, I delivered a morning session based on findings from our new research into the emotional demands of women’s AP work.

 

The small but perfectly formed group made for an incredible audience, and the presentation quickly became an interactive discussion. Colleagues shared their experiences of managing women’s APs at different senior levels and reflected on what this means for supporting staff wellbeing. Afterwards, I was lucky enough to attend Jonathan Hussey’s seminar on The Emotional Toll of Probation / AP Work, where many of the themes emerging from my own research were, comfortingly, also central to Jonathan’s work and to his experiences as a former probation officer. It was an excellent event, and I am grateful to the NAPA team for organising it so thoughtfully and for being supportive throughout.

 

Conference 3: The British Society of Criminology’s Annual Conference, Nottingham Trent University (NTU) (7-10 July 2026) #BSC2026

 

The third and final conference of the week took me to Robin Hood’s stomping ground – Nottingham.

 

Hosted by NTU, the BSC conference 2026 saw me take sweaty train number three to, sweatily, meet up with my colleague, Jess Lawrence, where we, sweatily, ate university snacks and excitedly planned our conference viewing schedule. I don’t have the blog space to underline how great the conference was, but Jess’ LinkedIn post provides a super overview of it. It was a wonderful few days with some excellent sessions. A few highlights: Professor Fergus McNeill’s Scottish Folk-Tale epilogue, understanding that imprisonment, even of the fairy kind, can take a significant emotional toll on a person; Sally-Anne Beverley and NTU colleagues talking of creative approaches to working with criminalised women; Nicola Taylor Brown’s research on working with justice-involved women; Katie Bovington on male survivorship; and two outstanding keynotes from Dr Victoria Knight from De Montfort University and Dr David Goyes from the University of Oslo. Both, I noted, drawing on very different research, but with core themes around the ethics and responsibility to human participants, and importantly, not forgetting who we are doing our research for and why.

 

Finally, on in the last panel slot, on the last day of the conference, Jess and I delivered our two sessions on Psychological Safety and The Women’s AP research. Our session was chaired by Jason Billenness-Clarke, NTU, who completed our trio with a superb presentation, Reimagining the Prison Officer Archetype: Diversification, Classification, Professionalisation. Thinking that we would perhaps just be presenting to ourselves (the outside temperature was approximately a billion degrees by that stage) we were delighted to have around 15 people attend. And despite tired brains and bodies, we had some super questions and reflections afterwards. And the day would not be complete without a hilariously awkward academic photoshoot. A big thank you to Morag Kennedy who directed us and tried her best to get us looking natural. (The jury is out whether that was achieved!).

 

Overall, a wonderful, hot, inspiring, exhausting and utterly fantastic week. I am so proud and privileged to be able to do the work that I do and can’t wait to see where the rest of the year takes us.

 

Intervention Alliance’s research: The Practical and Emotional Demands of Managing and Working in a Women’s Independent Approved Premises, will be out in September/October 2026.  Contact PracticeResearchUnit@interventionsalliance.co.uk or Kerry.ellis-devitt@interventionsalliance.co.uk for further details.