The Project
Project background
Researchers often engage with sensitive topics.
For example, social scientists investigating child and adolescent abuse in social care; educational researchers looking at student bullying and exclusion in schools, and discrimination of all kinds; medical researchers conducting cancer research and interacting with sick patients and distressed family members; public health scientists working with pandemic data, maternal and neonatal mortality rates, injuries in conflict zones; climate scientists recording environmental disasters; humanities researchers reading through painful historical narratives and violent archival materials; political researchers undertaking fieldwork in dangerous settings exposed to poverty and war; and social policy researchers working with the unemployed and homeless – the name just a few examples across the spectrum.
Researchers are therefore exposed to the trauma of others, which we call ‘vicarious trauma’ or secondary trauma, yet these researcher experiences remain underexplored.
This project seeks to explore the prevalence, impact, and coping strategies related to vicarious trauma among university student and staff researchers, with the goal being to develop research training materials to mitigate this challenge.
Online questionnaires
If you are a student or staff researcher, from all disciplines, across university settings who has undertaken, or is currently doing, research and potentially been exposed to vicarious or secondary trauma, we kindly invite you to complete this online questionnaire.
In addition, if you are a University of Oxford student or staff researcher who has participated in a ‘Vicarious Trauma workshop’ you are invited to complete this second online questionnaire to evaluate the intervention – with the option of a follow-up online interview.
Through these surveys, and interviews, we hope to establish the extent of the challenge and its impact, as well as how we can develop evidence-based and practical trauma-informed resources for researchers. The goals of this project are to enhance research safety, resilience and wellbeing; support professional sustainability; and foster institutional research culture change.
Workshops
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by your research and unsupported?
Please help us shape the vision for future research support at one of two in-person Thursday lunchtime workshops: 12 March (1 hour) or 19 March (2 hours).
Many researchers work closely with distressing stories, data, and experiences – but we rarely talk about the impact this has on us. The SUPPORT (Scalable, Unified Practices for Presenting Ongoing Researcher Trauma) project focuses on vicarious (secondary) trauma in research – and how we can better support researchers engaged in emotionally or psychologically demanding research.
In these workshops, we will define what we mean by vicarious trauma and share emerging findings from the SUPPORT project. We will actively invite participants to reflect on their experiences and share what they believe would be useful approaches and interventions to prevent and treat vicarious trauma in researchers throughout the research lifecycle. The aim of these workshops is to together develop more effective recommendations for safer, more sustainable research practice.
These workshops are open to all Oxford students and staff from any discipline. Lunch will be provided.
Thursday, 12 March workshop: 12.45pm – 1.45pm, Seminar Room A
Thursday, 19 March workshop: 12.30pm – 2.30pm, GUDTP Hub, Manor Road
