Past projects

An overview of the projects and associated outputs in my research focal areas: sexual and reproductive decision-making, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender and sexuality.

This pilot intervention in Kayelitsha, an impoverished 'township, in Cape Town, was part of the Sexual Violence in Schools in South Africa programme, a national sexual violence intervention aiming to improve educational outcomes for girls through safer school environments.

We took a mixed-methods approach, with the aim of assessing impact at baseline, mid-term and end-term. Unfortunately, funding was discontinued during the course of the intervention and so the planned end-term evaluation was not done.  

​

Journal Article

Morison, T., Macleod, C., Lynch, (2021). ‘My friends would laugh at me’: Embedding the dominant heterosexual script in the talk of primary school students. Gender and Education, Online First, 1-17.

​

Presentations

• Morison, T., et al. (2019). Starting early: Promoting younger adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health through intimate partner violence intervention. Paper presented at IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion Rotorua (NZ), 7 - 11 April 2019.

• Lynch, I, …  Morison, et al., (2017). Starting young: Intimate partner violence among very young adolescents in Cape Town. Paper presented at Pan-African Psychology Congress, South Africa, 18 -21 September 2017, Durban.

• Macleod, C., Lynch, I., Morison, T., & Saunders, B., (2017). “Girls want to be pleaded”: The sexual ‘hustler’ and provider masculinity. Paper presented at the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society, Bangkok, Thailand, 12-15 July 2017.

• Lynch, I., Morison, T., et al., (2016). What’s love got to do with it? Love and narratives of normalisation in township-based SA adolescents’ talk about intimate partner violence. Paper presented at Int. Conf. on Community Psychology, Durban, South Africa, 27 – 30 May.

• Lynch, I., Essop, R., Tolla, T., & Morison, T. ​(2018). Intimate partner violence in Khayelitsha schools: A culture of silence. HSRC Review, 16(1), 10-12.

Knowledge translation

• Morison, T., et al. (2017). ‘Dating rules’ and intimate partner violence in township schools: Findings from the SeViSSA Baseline Study. Research Brief. Cape Town: HSRC.

• Lynch, I., Morison, T. & Garden, E. (2017). high rates of sexual violence with younger learners most vulnerable. Research Highlight 1. Cape Town: HSRC.

• Lynch, I., Morison, T. & Garden, E. (2017). A culture of silence that normalises widespread violence. Research Highlight 2. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council.

​​

Reports

• Lynch, I., Morison, T., et al. (2018). “Kwanele! Communities ensuring safe learning environments for girls” in Khayelitsha: Part of the Sexual Violence in Schools in SA initiative in South Africa: Midterm report. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council/Rhodes University.  

• Lynch, I., Morison, T., et al., (2016). “Kwanele! Communities ensuring safe learning environments for girls” in Khayelitsha: Part of the Sexual Violence in Schools in SA initiative in South Africa: Baseline report. Cape Town: HSRC/Rhodes University.

The research project responds to the call for a more contextualised understandings of and approaches to young people's sexual and reproductive health, especially in Aotearoa NZ. Our study attends to the socio-cultural context and how it enables or restricts young women's SRH decisions and practices. Sarah Herbert and I analysed 2 forms of public discussion: SRH policy and media reportage on contraception, abortion, and pregnancy. We considered how they understand youth sexuality, and position young women of diverse social locations, and what this means for their sexual and reproductive freedom and agency. Our aim was to help produce knowledge to address the "serious lack of attention to creating receptive social environments, including a failure to address and even reinforcing of harmful assumptions, such as stereotyping of young women" (Redstone & Conn).

​

Journal articles

Morison, T., & Herbert, S. (2020). Muted resistance: The deployment of youth voice in news coverage in Aotearoa New Zealand. Feminism & Psychology, 30(1), 80 – 99.

Morison, T. & Herbert, S. (2019). Rethinking ‘risk’ in sexual and reproductive health policy: The value of the reproductive justice framework. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 16(4), 434-445.

​

Policy Brief

Morison, T., Herbert, S. & Eagar, D. (2018). Rethinking ‘risk’ in sexual and reproductive health policy: Implications for marginalised youth. Palmerston North: Massey University.

​

Presentation

Morison, T. & Herbert, S. (2017). Youth on the margins: A discursive analysis of Aotearoa NZ Sexual & Reproductive Health (SRH) policy. Paper presented at the 6th New Zealand Discourse Conference, 6 – 9 December 2017, Auckland, New Zealand.

Book

• Morison, T., Lynch, I., Reddy, V. (Eds). (2019) Queer kinship: South African perspectives on the sexual politics of family-making and belonging. Routledge. 

​​

Chapters co-authored by me

• Macleod, C., Morison, T., & Lynch, I. (2019). Focus on ‘the `Family’? How South African Family Policy Fails Queer Families. 

​​

Other​

• Morison, T. (2015). ‘Non-conventional’ families. HSRC Review, 13(3), 32-33.

​

The focus of this research project is on planned same-gendered families, specifically the parenthood decisions (i.e., the choice of whether or not to be a father and associated decisions) of gay-identified men. This research is underpinned by the principle of reproductive justice and motivated by the marginal position that these men occupy both socially and in research on fatherhood and reproductive decision-making.

This qualitative study is focused on reproductive decision-making and specifically on the experiences of individuals who choose to remain childfree/voluntarily childless. This online ethnography explores how childfree identities are constructed by individuals who describe themselves as childfree.

​

Publications

• Lynch, I., Morison, T., et al. (2018). From deviant choice to feminist issue: An historical analysis of scholarship on voluntary childlessness (1920 to 2013). In N. Sappleton (Ed.) Voluntary and involuntary childlessness: The joys of Otherhood? Emerald Publishing. [Pre-Print Version]​

• Morison, T., et al. (2015). Stigma resistance in online childfree communities: The limitations of choice rhetoric. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(2), 184 - 198.

​

Other

Blog

Facebook Community

​

Uptake/impact

•    The findings from our Voluntary childlessness study have been reported on by several international media outlets

Women's Health (2013); Radio702 (2015); WIRED (2019), NZ Herald (2019) and North & South Magazine (2020). Our work was most recently featured on the international podcast Unladylike (ep 144: Childfree by choice).

​

*The annual programme aims to enhance communication between Emerging Psychologists (selected newly graduated scholars) from different countries and diverse cultural backgrounds and to promote knowledge exchange between established and younger researchers in psychology.