Understanding student responses to gender-based violence on campus: negotiation, reinscription and resistance

This chapter examines the possibilities for crafting student responses to gender based violence (GBV) in UK universities. Drawing upon the findings of the ‘Stand Together’ action research project at the University of Lincoln (UOL), it explores the possibilities and complexity of challenging gendered attitudes, behaviours and the broader cultural norms underpinning GBV in two sites where gender norms and everyday forms of GBV are re-inscribed, negotiated and resisted — social media and the night-time economy (NTE). The chapter first provides an overview of how the BI model at UOL was developed before discussing the research methods used. It then considers students’ experiences of online ‘lad culture’; responses to objectification, sexism and rape culture on social media; students’ experiences of sexual harassment in the NTE; and responses to sexual harassment in the NTE. The chapter concludes by outlining some of the key challenges and potential of prevention education in a university context.