Courtesy of Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide

27 October 2020

In the fields of gender and religious studies and gender and development, religious systems have been most often interpreted as inegalitarian and as conducive to conjugal abuse. Many studies have lacked the proper contextualisation to understand how local traditions have been known and experienced vernacularly. In this webinar, Dr Romina Istratii presents a theology-informed, ethnographic study of conjugal abuse realities and attitudes in the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahәdo community of Aksum in Northern Ethiopia. The study stresses the urgency for an approach that understands how laity and clergy deploy religious discourse to maintain practices and social norms and that subtly leverages on apostolic Orthodox theology to facilitate normative, attitudinal and behavioural change.

Courtesy of the University of Sheffield

20 May 2020

In this interview conducted with the University of Sheffield, Dr Romina Istratii shares some of the main ethical challenges that she faced while conducting research on domestic violence in Northern Ethiopia, which was committed to epistemological reflexivity and being transparent about the positionality of the non-local researcher in the research process. Inter alia, she addresses ethical and practical issues around entering the field, community engagement, consent and data management, language learning and safety in domestic violence research.