Over the past 20 years, there has been substantial progress made in research on how to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) in low and middle income countries (LMICs) [
1,
2]. The extent of the problem and risk factors for VAWG have been well documented [
3‐
5], as have the serious mental and physical health consequences of violence for women’s lives [
6‐
8]. In order to address violence and its consequences in LMICs, available evidence points to the potential of community-based interventions that use group training and community mobilisation techniques to prevent VAWG [
9]. A handful of cluster randomised trials of curriculum-based community mobilisation interventions have equally demonstrated that reducing the prevalence of violence in relatively short timeframes is indeed possible [
10‐
12], and recent evidence from the global programme on “What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls” emphasises that carefully planned interventions adapted for local contexts with a clear theory of change can achieve positive outcomes [
13].
While well-designed interventions that target risk factors of violence is a useful starting point for thinking about how to design successful VAWG prevention interventions, the adaptation of predefined curricula in different settings around the world raises concerns around power and privilege when working with communities in LMICs with a colonial history. The social and structural factors that contribute to high levels of VAWG, including gender inequalities, extreme poverty and social marginalisation, are often magnified for communities with a legacy of colonialism [
14]. For many postcolonial scholars, the violence of colonialism is intimately connected to the high rates of VAWG currently experienced in many LMICs and in aboriginal communities globally [
15]. In much the same way, colonialism and new forms of imperialism are often blamed for undermining Southern practices and epistemologies, or ‘ways of knowing’, as part of research practices [
16]. This has led to calls for ‘epistemic justice’ through a recognition of Southern epistemologies [
17], e.g. theories of how knowledge is obtained, justified and reproduced that are historically aligned with the beliefs and practices of pre-colonial societies. In order to integrate Southern epistemologies into VAWG prevention interventions, the structural inequalities that have marginalised indigenous forms of knowledge need to first be addressed.
Towards this goal, we outline a study design for a novel participatory approach to involving communities affected by violence and with a history of colonialism in the design of their own VAWG prevention interventions. We use a place-based definition of community in this article, whereby communities are geographically and conceptually linked to a location or physical place. We argue that the participation of communities is necessary to address the limitations of current approaches to VAWG prevention research and to reverse the colonial practices that have contributed to the exclusion of a Southern perspective in intervention design and evaluation research. We discuss how the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic has also provided an opportunity for rethinking research relationships and giving more control over research ideas to local communities. As a means of bringing Southern epistemologies into VAWG prevention research, we have prioritised four research-related domains and outline a participatory study to address these domains as part of a strategy for decolonising our own research practices.
Decolonising VAWG research using participatory approaches to intervention design
Throughout the colonial period lasting from the 15th to the late twentieth century, research was often used as a means of re-affirming and consolidating the colonial project and the dominance of the coloniser over the colonised [
18,
19]. For example, Turball outlines how Australian aboriginal remains were removed from ancient burial grounds as part of the scientific study of racial difference, and the justification of the colonial belief in the inferiority of aboriginal bodies [
20]. Others argue that the extractive tendencies of Euro-Western research practices did not end with the colonial period, and that new forms of imperialism and post-colonial relationships between the researcher and the researched still persist in today’s research practices [
21‐
23]. For instance, Latin American scholars have pointed to the ways in which the legacy of colonialism still configures social life in the region through current economic arrangements and political systems [
24].
To address the legacy of colonial histories and new imperial relationships, scholars in Australia, New Zealand and Canada in particular have drawn attention to the importance of an anti-colonial approach to research [
25‐
28]. These scholars point to the essential need to conduct research about indigenous issues in meaningful collaboration with communities and ensure that an indigenous worldview underpins research with direct benefits to the communities involved [
16,
29]. Pacific researchers in particular have pointed to a unique ontology of research from the perspective of Pacific indigenous communities founded in relationality rather than individualistic values [
28,
30]. Despite growing scholarship that adopts this more critical approach to research practices with indigenous populations [
31,
32], an anti-colonial perspective has rarely been applied to research on VAWG prevention. As a potential explanation, scholars point to the hard-won assumption by feminist researchers that VAWG is directly caused by patriarchy and gender inequalities, which can undermine attention to indigenous explanations for VAWG as rooted in structural forms of violence that are also experienced by men [
27]. Others have pointed to how the current emphasis on gender inequality as a key driver of violence in Northern scholarship may obscure the way that gender has been historically constituted [
33,
34], and how this has been often been accomplished specifically through acts of VAWG (e.g. the rape of indigenous women and its role in reconfiguring sexuality, inheritance and notions of family) [
35].
The aim of this article is not to provide a critique of research practices in VAWG research, which has been provided by others [
27,
36]. Instead, we reflect on how participatory approaches can be used to create spaces that support dialogue between best practices in VAWG research and Southern epistemologies. This is consistent with what has been described as working as an ‘ally’ with marginalised populations to do their own research, or knowledge-sharing as part of a process of co-production [
27,
37]. It also responds to calls for a solidarity-based epistemology characterised by horizontal formations of knowledge and mutual learning [
38]. The participation of communities in research design, data collection and analysis is well recognised for its advantages in addressing the power dynamics that underpin research engagements [
39], and is often seen as aligned with indigenous approaches to research in the Pacific and Latin American traditions [
31,
40]. In this way, participatory research approaches offer a means of surfacing Southern epistemologies by drawing attention to the ‘epistemic privilege’ of mainstream research approaches, exposing the power dynamics embedded in knowledge production, and providing a space for open discussion [
41].
This paper is organised around four domains of VAWG prevention research design: (1) ethical guidelines, (2) theories of change, (3) outcome measurement, and (4) intervention development. We discuss each of these domains in turn, briefly summarising the relevant literature within VAWG research and then discussing how we have used participatory methods to bring a Southern perspective into dialogue with the literature as part of the EVE Project (Evidence for Violence prevention in the Extreme).
The EVE project
The EVE Project is a mixed methods participatory project funded by UK Research and Innovation, which started in March 2020. The aim of this research project is to establish an evidence-base for how to prevent VAWG in high-prevalence settings globally (defined as settings with a prevalence of past year physical and/or sexual violence greater than the global median of 11.4%). The project has four main objectives, which are aligned with the four domains of VAWG prevention research design.