‘Not Just Victims, Not Just Offenders’: Young People’s Stories of Violence, Gender, and Agency

The present research project is a collaboration between the National Centre for Knowledge on Men's Violence Against Women (NCK) and Stockholm University. The project uses in-depth semi-structured interviews with youths and young adults who have experienced early trauma and who have been exposed to violence in some form, either as victims, perpetrators or both, as well as focus group interviews with professionals within the social services and non-governmental organisations working closely to the target group.

The overarching purpose of this study is to explore how young people who have experienced violence and coercive control during childhood interpret and describe how these experiences relate to their later experiences of violence, intimate relationships and criminal or gang-related environments during their teenage years.

The study focuses on the connection between early exposure to violence, polyvictimisation, gender norms and the development of agency and coping mechanisms. By centring young people’s voices, the project attempts to identify both risk and protective factors that shape trajectories of violence and resilience.