Session: Journeys through Gender-Based Violence: Charting Victimization, Survivorship, Healing, Social Action, and Intervention Implementation (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

The first paper uses longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to examine how structural and contextual conditions, such as neighborhood disadvantage and system inequality, shape IPV risk through indirect pathways. Findings highlight the mediating roles of childhood abuse and community violence exposure, underscoring how structural conditions become embodied across the life course and shift the focus toward the social production of vulnerability.

The second and third papers center on lived experience and meaning-making processes related to GBV. A qualitative sentiment analysis of audience responses to a theatrical production based on the testimonies of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford (The Ford/Hill Project) reveals how exposure to public narratives of GBV can catalyze emotional and cognitive shifts over time, fostering reflection, social connection, and engagement. Complementing this, a hermeneutic phenomenological study examines how social identity shapes survivors’ decision-making following sexual assault. Findings demonstrate that identity congruence, power asymmetries, and perceptions of safety critically influence disclosure, help-seeking, and justice-seeking behaviors, while highlighting the limitations of existing systems and the need for alternative survivor-defined pathways to justice.

The final two papers focus on RJ as an emerging response to GBV, with particular attention to implementation processes and adaptations in practice for DV crimes in cases of IPV. A qualitative study of victim-only restorative circles within a Circles of Peace (CP) program illustrates how these pathways emerged as both an ethical and practical response to survivors’ needs for safety, autonomy, and voice, independent of engagement with those who caused harm. Extending this work, an implementation study of CP in a new U.S. jurisdiction examines how system-level factors, organizational readiness, community context, and safety considerations shape the adoption and sustainability of RJ interventions in the context of domestic violence.

Together, we highlight GBV as a multi-level phenomenon requiring structurally informed, survivor-centered, and contextually responsive approaches. By integrating longitudinal, qualitative, and implementation-focused studies, this symposium advances a comprehensive framework for understanding GBV that links structural conditions, lived experiences, and intervention strategies. For social work research, this highlights multi-level, interdisciplinary approaches that address power, inequality, and lived experience. For practice, they emphasize trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and survivor-defined interventions beyond traditional approaches and systems. For policy, they point to the importance of investing in upstream structural prevention, supporting alternative and restorative approaches to justice, and addressing systemic barriers that limit access to safety, healing, and meaningful redress.