On 27 September 2026, the University of Melbourne hosted a hybrid seminar event examining the politics of victim-survivor speech and “survivor-led” responses to sexual violence. The event featured a keynote presentation from Dr molly ackhurst, visiting from the University of Greenwich, UK, with Dr Tully O’Neill (La Trobe University), Jess Oldfield (La Trobe University), and A/Prof Bianca Fileborn (University of Melbourne) acting as respondents.
Event Background
The seminar aimed to explore and build upon Dr ackhurst’s scholarship on the affective dimensions of contemporary Anglophone feminist sexual violence politics.
Increasingly, sexual violence scholarship, activism and sector-work emphasises the importance of ‘survivor-led’ or survivor-centred responses to sexual violence. A growing body of feminist and critical research, for example, aims to document the self-articulated justice needs or interests of victim-survivors. Such responses have emerged as a necessary correction to the historical and ongoing exclusion and silencing of survivors’ voices, and to redress the attendant harms caused to many survivors as a result.
However, important questions remain regarding which survivors are able to speak and be heard, what survivor speech ‘does’, the affective conditions surrounded by and attached to survivor speech, and how these might shape who is heard and what sets of responses are centered in relation to sexual violence. In this seminar event, we explored the politics of ‘survivor-led’ responses, and the ways in which these may become both challenging to critique, and bound up in punitive, carceral responses to sexual violence. We asked how we might listen to survivor voices ethically, with a critical ‘feminist ear’ (Ahmed, 2021) – how can we have a better dialogue that neither reproduces the silencing and disbelief that survivors have been subjected to, while still leaving space for critique and ensuring that the needs of all survivors are heard?
Towards ‘survivor-centered’ politics
ackhurst’s presentation drew on findings from her ongoing research that asks why contemporary feminist advocacy and scholarship continues to return to the criminal legal system as a potential site of ‘justice’ in spite of well-documented evidence that the system all-too-often functions as a site of harm and injustice for many victim-survivors and marginalised communities. Central to this, for ackhurst, is the archetypal figure of the ‘wounded survivor’; an affective figure who is constructed as innocent and irreparably harmed by her experiences. While the emergence of this figure has enabled the experiences and voices of some victim-survivors to be seen and heard, ackhurst argued that it has also given rise to unintended consequences. One of these is the solidification of what she refers to as a “survivor-led” politics.
Reflecting on the emergence of ‘survivor-led’ scholarship and praxis over the past few decades, ackhurst argued that while this approach has offered a much-needed counterpoint to the silencing and exclusion of survivor knowledge, feminism’s ‘survivor-led’ politics has created a context in which feminist scholars and practitioners are unable to pose critical questions of survivor speech, even when this comes at the expense of the needs of marginalised survivors. In closing, ackhurst advocated for a shift from ‘victim-led’ to ‘victim-centered’ approaches to listening.
Leading on from molly’s presentation, Tully, Jess and Bianca reflected on how they have approached feminist listening and ‘victim-centered’ perspectives in their own work.
Reflecting on a book project currently underway with Dr Rachel Loney-Howes and Jessica Oldfield, Tully spoke about the emergence of ‘public survivors’ in the Australian context. Public survivors are able to build and sustain visible, audience-facing work, often drawing on their own stories while undertaking substantial emotional and administrative labour. Tully drew connections between these two kinds of survivor figure, questioning where they fit in a survivor-led politics and what the implications of such a politics might be.
Drawing on her PhD research, Jess reflected on how victim-survivors are impacted by the figure of the ‘wounded survivor’, and the consequences of the growing embrace of survivor-led politics for how they do and don’t speak about sexual violence. She highlighted how victim-survivors feel considerable pressure to listen to others with a ‘good feminist ear’ even when doing so may also cause them harm, and that the cultural prominence of the wounded survivor leads many to self-censor or opt for silence.
Bianca discussed the importance of situating victim-survivor speech within the political, cultural, social and affective contexts in which it occurs. This approach, they argue, asks us to view survivor-speech as contextually-situated rather than representing an essential or inherent ‘truth’ about victim-survivors’ justice needs and desired justice responses. Doing so, they argue, might better equip us as researchers to identify and hear the justice ‘need’ being expressed.
In closing, we hope that the seminar has fostered further dialogue and thinking about how we can productively and ethically engage with victim-survivors’ voices, and look forward to future conversation and collaboration on this topic.
You may be interested in the following related publications:
ackhurst, m. (2025). Listening, or ‘led by’? Belief, innocence and the risks of a ‘survivor-led’ feminist politics. Feminist Theory, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001251380418
O’Neill, T., Loney-Howes, R., & Oldfield, J. (2025). Becoming a Public Survivor of Sexual Violence in Australia. Social & Legal Studies, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639241303865
Tully O’Neill, Fileborn, B. (2026). ‘These Men Are Disgusting Losers’: Theorizing the Affective Economies of Digital Justice and Activism, The British Journal of Criminology, 66 (2): 349–370, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azae085
