Undone: Life, care and violence at Danish domestic violence shelters

PhD defence by Marie Louise Leine Rasmussen

Assessment Committee

Associate Professor Andreas Bandak, ToRS, University of Copenhagen (Chairperson)
Professsor Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen, Syddansk Universitet
Associate Professor Alessandra Gribaldo, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Supervisors

Associate Professor Thomas Brudholm

Department

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Place

Building: 9A, Room: 3.01, Karen Blixens Plads 8, 2300 København S

Email address to gain access to the thesis: marie.leine@hum.ku.dk.
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Short description of the thesis

Undone: Life, care and violence at Danish domestic violence shelters

For women who seek refuge at Danish domestic violence shelters (krisecentre/crisis centres), everyday life is shaped by entanglements of violence, care, and uncertainty about the future. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at two crisis centres in Copenhagen, Denmark, this thesis examines how prevailing understandings of affliction and domestic violence come to bear on women’s efforts and possibilities for remaking life during and after their stay at the centres.

The thesis focuses on how women voice attachments, intimacies, and forms of life they seek to sustain and make hold under the undoing pressures of violence and care. The thesis argues that these efforts challenge prevailing understandings of gendered violence, repair, and ordinary life that shape Danish social and political responses to victim-survivors of gendered violence.