Personal profile

Research interests

My main research interests concern Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (VAWDASV). I joined USW in 2023 as Project Associate for the Bawso Stories Project, a cross-sector partnership between USW, specialist domestic abuse service Bawso and Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales). This storytelling project sought to capture, curate and amplify the voices of Bawso service users and diversify the collections held in the national archive with oral histories and digital stories. 

I am now Senior Research Assistant working across a number of projects focusing on gender-based violence, primarily a Health and Care Research Wales funded project exploring multi-agency responses to minoritised survivors of domestic abuse and a VISION Consortium funded project investigating young people's attitudes to stalking in Wales. I am also Co-I on a number of other developing research areas, such as evaluating the impact of knife crime reduction campaigns on young people and social prescribing/higher education engagement opportunities for VAWDASV survivors.

I have a longstanding interest in working with under-represented communities and groups and improving both wellbeing and access to services and opportunties. Prior to joining USW, I was Research Assistant/Fellow at the University of Warwick where I worked on research about how to enhance access to doctoral study for minoritised students. 

Expertise

Between 2018-2022 I completed a PhD on the topic of feminist pedagogy at Loughborough University. In addition to having academic expertise in this area reagrding histories and theories of feminist pedagogy, I have also been a part of several inclusive education projects as Research Fellow at the University of Warwick; as consultant for the charity SafeLives; as Co-I for an LGBTQ+ inclusion project at Cardiff University. 

As an interdisciplinary researcher working across Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities, I have experience with a range of qualitative methods such close reading, document analysis, interviews, focus groups, diary method, qualitative surveys and digital storytelling. 

Alongside research I have a longstanding practice of developing and facilitating public arts initiatives, such as reading groups, creative workshops, exhibition programmes and artist residencies. In this capacity I have worked primarily with collaborators in Denmark, primarily the art platforms rum46 and Sigrids Stue

 

External positions

Equal Power Equal Voice Mentee

Sept 2023 → …

Curatorial Collaborator , rum46

2018 → …

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics where Sophia Kier-Byfield is active. These topic labels come from the works of this person. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
  • 1 Similar Profiles

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

Recent external collaboration on country/territory level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots or