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Purpose: This article analyzes violence and abuse in LGBTIQ + people's former relationships. Combining assemblage theory with intersectionality, it rethinks queer and feminist understandings by analyzing intimate partner violence as assemblages. This offers a nuanced approach that does not rely on simplistic causal models. Methods: The article draws on a dataset of interviews with separated LGBTIQ + people, 30 in Finland and 28 in England. It focuses on 13 interviewees who gave accounts of mental, physical, and sexual violence within previous relationships. Following a Deleuze-inspired rhizomatic methodology, the analysis "enters in the middle" of complex abusive assemblages and identifies the most central elements and affective entanglements that helped to maintain and/or diminish the abuse. Results: Assemblages that engender and maintain abuse are complex and multiple. Nevertheless, they are not random: the rhizomatic workings of heteronormativity, the social status of LGBTIQ + relationships, and gender-related elements entangle in assemblages that amplify the effects of abuse and constrain participants' bodies. Conclusions: Abuse in LGBTIQ + people's relationships can be understood through the posthuman theoretical idea of distributed agency: abuse gains force in and through its entanglements with other elements within an assemblage. This does not absolve abusive persons of responsibility for their actions. Rather, it reveals that the efficacy of agency depends on the interactive forces and elements within an assemblage. Abuse and violence often accumulate, as the exposure of bodies to injurious conditions produces affective relations that can become patterned in LGBTIQ + people's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the results of evaluating a Catalan training program for practitioners working with survivors of gender-related violence. Considering the lack of scientific evidence previously shown by studies on this topic, this article aimed to triangulate the participants' self-perception with their assessment of knowledge and competencies in tackling digital gender-related violence before and after the training. To do so, a pre-test and post-test case-based design was employed to identify and measure the participants' improvement in self-perceived knowledge and their effective gain in knowledge and skills to address this kind of violence. Considering the contributions of a feminist evaluation approach, we also included in our evaluation the analysis of classroom interactions and the participants' responses. The results overall demonstrate that the incorporation of assessment criteria from the feminist evaluation methodology increased the reliability of evaluation criteria. In addition, it also enabled us to identify the need to continue developing training programs that empower participants and prevent women and LGBTQI+ people from disengaging from digital spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it helpful to share feminist theory with youth practitioners and is there room for it on short training courses such as in EU Action Projects? Can theoretical work on intersectionality, and the concept of gender-related violence (GRV) which grew from it, be shared in training interventions with professionals who work with children and young people? This article is based on the findings of the EU co-funded GAP Work Project that sought to improve GRV intervention and referral through training for practitioners in everyday (rather than specialist) contact with children or young people in four countries. Summarising how the project worked, and how theory informed it, including a brief account of how the concept of GRV worked in practice, guides the selection of material from the wider Project Final Report and offers a reflection on how educators used theory in the training, sometimes explicitly in the sessions. It therefore contributes our experiences to discussions about the design and implementation of education and training about violence and abuse. It concludes by sharing resources for designing and implementing training on sexual harassment, violence and hate crime, including from other recent projects that offer resources for incorporating an intersectional perspective when developing local government plans, programmes, and projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the results of evaluating a Catalan training program for practitioners working with survivors of gender-related violence. Considering the lack of scientific evidence previously shown by studies on this topic, this article aimed to triangulate the participants’ self-perception with their assessment of knowledge and competencies in tackling digital gender-related violence before and after the training. To do so, a pre-test and post-test case-based design was employed to identify and measure the participants’ improvement in self-perceived knowledge and their effective gain in knowledge and skills to address this kind of violence. Considering the contributions of a feminist evaluation approach, we also included in our evaluation the analysis of classroom interactions and the participants’ responses. The results overall demonstrate that the incorporation of assessment criteria from the feminist evaluation methodology increased the reliability of evaluation criteria. In addition, it also enabled us to identify the need to continue developing training programs that empower participants and prevent women and LGBTQI+ people from disengaging from digital spaces.

Is it helpful to share feminist theory with youth practitioners and is there room for it on short training courses such as in EU Action Projects? Can theoretical work on intersectionality, and the concept of gender-related violence (GRV) which grew from it, be shared in training interventions with professionals who work with children and young people? This article is based on the findings of the EU co-funded GAP Work Project that sought to improve GRV intervention and referral through training for practitioners in everyday (rather than specialist) contact with children or young people in four countries. Summarising how the project worked, and how theory informed it, including a brief account of how the concept of GRV worked in practice, guides the selection of material from the wider Project Final Report and offers a reflection on how educators used theory in the training, sometimes explicitly in the sessions. It therefore contributes our experiences to discussions about the design and implementation of education and training about violence and abuse. It concludes by sharing resources for designing and implementing training on sexual harassment, violence and hate crime, including from other recent projects that offer resources for incorporating an intersectional perspective when developing local government plans, programmes, and projects.