Webinar: Professional boundaries and sexual harassment in academic settings

Professional boundaries and sexual harassment
in academic settings

Thursday 14 November 2024

15:00 – 16:30 CET

Online [Zoom]

The term ‘professional boundaries’ denotes appropriate standards of behaviour by professionals in working with adult clients, patients or students (Cooper, 2012). However, in higher education, shared understandings of appropriate boundaries are often lacking. At the same time, power imbalances between staff and early career researchers (PhDs, postdoctoral researchers) create a context where sexual harassment and other abuses of power are more likely to occur; around 10% of women postgraduate students are targeted for sexual harassment during their studies (Cantor et al, 2019; Australian Human Rights Commission, 2017).

In this webinar, Dr Anna Bull will introduce key points relating to professional boundaries in academic settings, followed by the discussion of an anonymised case study, used with permission, of boundary-blurring behaviours. This will be followed by a conversation in plenary and a Q&A session. The case study, along with details of how we will hold a safer space, will be shared a few days in advance of the session.

Learning objectives

• To introduce the concept of professional boundaries and explore its relevance in academic settings
• To recognise boundary-blurring behaviours that constitute or enable sexual harassment
• To understand how power imbalances and poor professional boundaries contribute to enabling sexual harassment to occur

Target audience

• University students (all levels), early career researchers, academic staff.
• Any staff involved in supporting postgraduate research students and supervisors
• Any staff involved in addressing gender-based violence in higher education (e.g. Gender Equality officers, Gender Equality committees, task forces or working groups on gender-based violence, human resources personnel and legal advisors, etc.).

Facilitation and moderation

The webinar will be facilitated by Dr Anna Bull (University of York) and moderated by Ana Belén Amil (Central European University).