The team

Dr Claire Cody, Senior Research Fellow and Head of Our Voices

Claire is a Senior Research Fellow at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre and has overseen the Our Voices programme since it began in 2013.

Claire has been working in the fields of child rights and child protection for the last 20 years based within the UK charity sector, the international development field and academia.

Over the last decade her research has focussed on understanding and improving responses to children and young people who have experienced various forms of sexual violence.

She established an international network on the recovery and reintegration of children affected by child sexual exploitation and trafficking in 2010, which subsequently led to the development of the RISE Learning Network, now led by the organisation Family for Every Child.

Claire has carried out fieldwork in the USA, India, Cambodia, Albania, Moldova and Serbia exploring responses to young people who have experienced sexual violence. She has undertaken consultancies for INGOs including ECPAT International, Anti-Slavery International and World Vision Cambodia.

Her recent research explores: the use of arts-based, group work with young people affected by child sexual abuse and exploitation; the value and challenges of peer support interventions for young people who have experienced sexual violence and; the process and outcomes of a participatory advocacy project with young women with lived experience of sexual violence in Eastern Europe.

In her work, Claire draws on trauma-informed approaches and feminist and empowerment theories to understand and explore the potential role of group work, art and activism with young people affected by sexual violence.

Claire Soares, Research Fellow

Claire joined the Safer Young Lives Research Centre in 2019 and has worked on the Our Voices programme since 2020. Prior to this, Claire worked as a member of the research team at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) where she was involved in a number of projects related to child sexual abuse that takes place in institutional contexts.

For the last ten years, Claire has worked across a range of primarily qualitative projects that have explored the support needs and experiences of young people affected by sexual abuse and where opportunities for practice improvements lie – with an emphasis on foregrounding the views of children and young people themselves.

She has facilitated interviews and workshops with young people directly affected by these experiences and is particularly interested in the role and application of arts-based research methods.

Through her work at the Centre (and particularly her involvement in the Our Voices programme), Claire has co-produced several resources centred on the value of participation and how young people’s participation can support positive outcomes for young people, services and wider society.

Young people’s experiences of the justice system and how it interacts with their wellbeing and recovery in the aftermath of sexual abuse is a particular research interest of Claire’s. Alongside her role at the centre, she is working towards a Professional Doctorate which is exploring experiences of pre-trial therapy for children involved in the criminal justice system as victims of sexual abuse.