CECAN Fellowship: A story-telling approach to developing a complexity-aware theory of change for violence prevention
Mentor: Kerstin Junge, The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Dr Olumide Adisa is Policy and Commissioning Manager at the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and a Senior Research Fellow at the Violence and Society Centre and Co-Investigator, VISION, City St George’s, London, UK. Olumide is a member of the Employers’ Initiative on Domestic Abuse’s national advisory council. In 2019, Olumide founded the Domestic Abuse Research Network (DARNet) at University of Suffolk. As an engaged academic and critical systems thinker, she brings an enormous breadth and depth of knowledge and experience on complex systemic change approaches to informing thinking and practice on violence prevention and mitigation, as well as improving services and commissioning for all victims/survivors. She takes an inclusive and collaborative approach to driving radical systemic change. She has authored various publications on violence, abuse, and intersectional equity and co-curated the highly endorsed book entitled Tackling Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence: A Systems Approach.
The fellowship is focused on blending theory-based experimentation with storytelling approaches to engage with challenging questions around conventional theories of change in complex systems. The fellowship will engage with dissatisfactions with/criticisms of complexity-aware theory of change (CToC) assumptions and propose a story-driven complexity framing to addressing some of the key shortcomings.