Intimate Partner Violence Survivors: Gaining Agency Through Information Management

Survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) may seek assistance from governmental agencies (e.g., local police, family courts) and social service agencies (e.g., domestic violence shelters, job training programs). That assistance, however, comes with conflicting goals and priorities which are instantiated as information-dependent processes and procedures.

Personal agency growth in IPV decision-making is intertwined with the information management skills required to navigate public responses to this personal crisis. This talk presents a multi-modal framework within which to explore effective information engagements of IPV survivors.

Lynn Westbrook, PhD, is currently an associate professor at the University of Texas School of Information, with an MA from the University of Chicago and a PhD from the University of Michigan. Her research interrogates the relationships between personal crises and public responses. Focusing primarily on women’s crises (i.e., intimate partner violence, sexual human trafficking, and gynecological cancer), Westbrook follows the affective, cognitive and behavioral threads across the life span of these ongoing crises. Placing women’s information in the context of power dynamics, her recent studies identified social service information literacy gaps in sexual human trafficking work.