Dr Tanya Frances

Professional biography

Tanya’s research interests include domestic abuse, gender-based violence, trauma, social inequalities and intersectionalities. Tanya has been involved in domestic abuse research since 2013, and is particularly interested in childhood and young adult experiences of domestic abuse, how people navigate transitions, and reflexive feminist methodologies that centre victim-survivor voices and stories. She is interested in approaches that attend to personal-political intersections taking a critical appraoch that attends to the socio-structural conditions that shape people's experiences of violence, the conditions that enable violence, and the conditions that shape how people make sense of violence and talk about it.

Tanya has worked on projects that have evaluated or explored services for domestic abuse, perinatal wellbeing, child sexual exploitation, care experienced children and young people, and child trafficking. She is interested in promoting and developing inclusive, accessible, and anti-oppressive practice, and developing services for people that aim to reduce barriers to access and that attend meaningfully to intersectionality and power, privilege and oppression. 

Currently, Tanya is working on projects exploring issues relating to gender-based violence. She is also working on projects that explore UK eating disorder treatment in terms of equitable access to care. Specifically at the moment she is exploring the role of weight-based treatment and referral criteria. She is interested in issues around epistemic justice, embodiment and the development of trauma-informed, power-sentivive and intersectionality-informed eating disorder treatment. 

Tanya's current contributions are to the presentation of D241 Exploring Mental Health and Counselling and to the production of new counselling course. Previously, she contributed to the production of D120 Encountering Psychology in the Everyday by writing content on lifespan development and qualiative methods. She also co-authored a short CPD counselling course, DGXS004 Trauma-Informed Counselling.

Tanya's teaching interests include qualitative methods, particularly narrative methods, reflexivity, ethics, feminist methodologies, and participatory approaches. She is also interested in teaching critical approaches, critical mental health, and domestic abuse. In relation to counselling and psychotherapy and clinical practice, her teaching expertise is around person-centred, humanistic and trauma-sensitive approaches, issues around accessibility and diversity, epistemic trust, and the integration of embodiment practices in trauma focused counselling or psychotherapy. 

In collaboration with the Intersectional Violences Research Group (IVRG), Tanya has been involved in providing consultation for the UK government's 2021 Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. Publications relating to this consultation work can be found in our article in The Coversation , in a BPS blog post as part of a media campaign, and in the BPS Psychology of Women and Equalities Section (POWES) blog post.

Tanya is a member of the BPS Psychology of Women and Equalities Section (POWES) Committee. She is also a founding member of the Intersectional Violences Research Group (IVRG), an international research group which takes a critical psychological approach using insights from feminist, queer, anti-carceral and trans approaches to the study of sexual and domestic violence. Lastly, Tanya is a founding member of the Lived Experiences of Eating Disorders Research Collective. This is a collective group of clinicians and academics with lived experience of eating disorders who are working in the eating disorders field. Our aim is to work towards a better understanding of a diverse range of eating disorders, and to contribute to developing the evidence-base for better care for all who need it. We are particularly intrested in building evidence which centres the voices and perspectives of people with lived experiences.

Tanya was awarded the 2022 PCCS Books Research Award, in collaboration with the British Association for Counselling an Psychotherapy (BACP).