Hidden in the Everyday: Financial Abuse as a Form of Intimate Partner Violence

Over the past two years, CESI’s Community Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) program has brokered and supported various projects focused on financial abuse as a form of intimate partner violence, taking a collaboration with the Woman Abuse Council of Toronto (WomanACT) beyond typical engaged research activities to experiment with broad knowledge mobilization and implementation.

Through a growing partnership, CESI, WomanAct, and psychology professor Dr. Paula Barata, University of Guelph students have been taking part in the full process of research impact, from knowledge creation to implementation. In the first phase of the project in Fall 2018, Master’s of Applied Social Psychology student Sonia Zawitkowski completed an independent studies project with WomanACT. Next, in Spring 2019, she and fellow psychology students Brianna Wilson and Emma Curie worked with Lieran Docherty, Program Manager at WomanACT, to research financial abuse and prepare the report Hidden In the Everyday: Financial Abuse as a Form of Intimate Partner Violence in the Toronto Area. This report draws on qualitative data gathered through surveys and focus groups with service providers and in-depth interviews with survivors to examine the experiences and impacts of financial abuse as well as the challenges in confronting it and opportunities to prevent and address it.

Fast forward to January, 2020, when Sonia and Brianna travelled to Italy after winning an international knowledge mobilization competition by creating a video about their community-engaged research. For their entry, Sonia and Brianna aimed to illustrate the importance of community-based research and “let the participants [in the financial abuse project] guide the story.” To learn more about Sonia and Brianna’s work, take a look at their winning video on financial abuse, read their interview with the SciShops team or learn more about CESI’s partnership with WomanAct.