Dr Natasha Mulvihill

At the moment, I am working on four areas:

1. Professional and powerful perpetrators of sexual violence and abuse, and institutional harm:

• The relationship between authority and coercion and specifically how 'high status/high public trust' professionals perpetrate sexual violence and abuse, and how professional tribunals and panels respond. 
• In November 2022, I was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant to further this work on professional perpetrators.  This project runs from November 2023 to October 2028. Updates will follow here: Powerful Perpetrators – ERC/UKRI project led by Dr Natasha Mulvihill, University of Bristol, UK.
• Through 2023-2024, I conducted research with Dr Fay Sweeting (Bournemouth) on police perpetrated domestic and sexual abuse.  Fay and I are currently curating a special issue on police perpetrators for the International Journal of Police Science and Management (due mid-2025).
• In 2022, I published a paper on doctor abuse, recognising the potential for sexual coercion and complicity within and between professional cultures.

2. Sex industry

• Co-author of 2019 Home Office commissioned report on prostitution and sex work and recent book (2022).
• Academic adviser to the National Police Chiefs Council Sex Work Working Group since 2019, contributing to national policing guidance.
• Teach a final year undergraduate Criminology unit looking at the sex industry called 'Sex, Power and Consumption'.

3. Faith and abuse

• Secured Zutshi-Smith funding with Dr Nadia Agtaie to hold an international symposium in September 2024 on the religious arbitration of marriages involving domestic abuse.  In October 2024, we published a report on the symposium proceedings.  Short briefings for domestic abuse services and faith communities are currently being prepared.  In addition, we are planning a thematic issue in 2026 with the Journal of Law and Religion.
• The symposium follows earlier ESRC-funded work (2015-2018) on justice responses to GBV, including religious arbitration.
• Through 2021 and into 2022, I worked on an Oak Foundation funded team project looking at faith and coercive control.  This included cases of religious leaders (a) as complicit in abuse and/or (b) as abusive intimate partners.

4. Intersections of sexual violence and harm with popular culture and technology:

• Currently writing up research into non-consensual 'rough sex' (outputs 2024/2025) and presented early findings at the annual IASR conference in July 2024.
• Working with Dr Katie Winkle (Uppsala) on robots, coercive control, domestic and sexual abuse.  See e.g. our paper accepted for ACM HRI 2024.
• Currently developing work with Dr Jo Large (Bristol) on online dating harms and social media (outputs 2024/2025).
• Contributed to volumes on (i) coercive control and (ii) sex work in popular song.

I came into academia after a number of years working in other sectors.  After completing an ESRC-funded PhD, I secured my first lectureship here at Bristol in 2017.  Write a blog (very infrequently): Criminology Tales

I am Chief External Examiner for the undergraduate Criminology programme at the University of Brighton (appointed until 2027).