Staff profile

Affiliation | Room number | Telephone |
---|---|---|
Assistant Professor (Research) in the Department of Sociology |
Biography
I joined the Department of Sociology at Durham in 2021, having previously worked at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire. At Durham, I am in the management group for the Contextual Safeguarding research programme and a member of the Communities and Social Justice, and Criminal Justice, Social Harm and Inequality research groups. I am Co-PI on two projects. The first, 'Contextual Safeguarding Across Borders', explores the applicability of Contextual Safeguarding in international settings with refugee children. For the second, 'Building Safety', I am working with a Local Authority in England to support a community-informed approach to 'Contextual Safeguarding' with a specific focus on inequalities. I am the editor of the Contextual Safeguarding Network blog.
I have a critical social psychology background. I am interested in how structural inequalities shape young people's experiences of violence and abuse in their communities, and their experience of harm reduction services. Adopting a contextual, critical, and zemiological approach, I am interested in understanding, demonstrating, and mitigating the ways in which policy and practice can contribute to young people's experiences of harm; particularly through the use of surveillance, or the utilisation of children's rights issues to justify oppressive policing, sentencing and immigration reform.
My recent publications have included an abolitionist analysis of children's social care using an autoethnographic method; two papers exploring the rate and use, and social harms implicated in, ‘out of area’ placements of adolescents exposed to ‘extra-familial’ risks; a contextual analysis of the efficacy and ethics of multi-agency safeguarding responses to ‘county lines’; and two papers analysising surveillance in innovation in children’s social care in response to extra-familial harm, and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I am a Social Work England registered social worker and a co-founder and trustee at the charity Social Workers Without Borders where I write and oversee probono Independent Social Work expert reports in relation to immigration appeals.
Follow me on Twitter @Laurie_Eli
Research interests
- Contextual and structural accounts of safety and harm
- Social justice perspectives in social work
- Anti-racism and migrant rights
Research groups
- Communities and Social Justice
- Criminal Justice, Social Harm and Inequalities
Publications
Chapter in book
- Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth & Pearce, Jenny (2022). Young People Negotiating Intra and Extra - Familial Harm and Safety: Social and Holistic Approaches. In Safeguarding Young People: Risk, Rights, Resilience and Relationships. Holmes, Dez Jessica Kingsley.
- King, Lynn, Ng'andu, Bridget & Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth (2020). Surmounting the Hostile Environment: Reflections on Social Work Activism Without Borders. In Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry. McGuirk, Siobhan & Pine, Adrienne PM Press.
- Wroe, L., Ng'andu, B., Doyle, M. & King, L. (2018). Positioning social workers without borders within green social work: Ethical considerations for social work as social justice work. In The Routledge Handbook of Green Social Work. Dominelli, Lena Routledge. 321-332.
Edited book
- Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth, Larkin, Rachel & Maglajlic, Reima Ana (2019). Social work with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants: Theory and skills for practice. Jessica Kingsley.
Journal Article
- Lloyd, Jenny, Manister, Molly & Wroe, Lauren (2023). Social care responses to children who experience criminal exploitation and violence: the conditions for a welfare response. The British Journal of Social Work
- Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth, Peace, Delphine & Firmin, Carlene (2023). ‘Relocating’ Adolescents from Risk beyond the Home: What Do We Learn When We Ask about Safety? The British Journal of Social Work bcad077.
- Hunter, Dom & Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth (2022). ‘Already doing the work’ social work, abolition and building the future from the present. Critical and Radical Social Work
- Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth (2022). When Helping Hurts: A Zemiological Analysis of a Child Protection Intervention in Adolescence—Implications for a Critical Child Protection Studies. Social Sciences 11(6): 263.
- Dillon, Joanne, Evans, Ffion & Wroe, Lauren Elizabeth (2021). COVID-19: changing fields of social work practice with children and young people. Critical and Radical Social Work 9(2): 289.
- Firmin, Carlene, Wroe, Lauren & Bernard, D (2021). Last Resort or Best Interest? Exploring the Risk and Safety Factors That Inform the Rates of Relocation for Young People Abused in Extra-Familial Settings. The British Journal of Social Work
- Wroe, L.E. (2021). Young people and “county lines” a contextual and social account. Journal of Children's Services 16(1): 39-55.
- Wroe, L.E. & Lloyd, J. (2020). Watching over or working with? Understanding social work innovation in response to extra-familial harm. Social Sciences 9(4).
- Wroe, L. (2019). Social working without borders: Challenging privatisation and complicity with the hostile environment. Critical and Radical Social Work 7(2): 251-255.
- Wroe, L.E. (2018). ‘It really is about telling people who asylum seekers really are, because we are human like anybody else’ Negotiating victimhood in refugee advocacy work. Discourse and Society 29(3): 324-343.