In this PhD project, I will examine the challenges, opportunities, and strategies of women who use drugs in harm reduction settings.

Purpose

The purpose of the Ph.D. project is to examine the everyday lives of structurally vulnerable women who use drugs (WWUD) and their use of harm reduction services. More specifically, I will explore how they perceive risks, experience harms, and navigate these. The findings will contribute to the so far limited research on WWUD and will help to identify and develop harm reduction initiatives and services for WWUD in practice.

Background

WWUD are at higher risk than men who use drugs in terms of experiencing psychological, physical, and sexual assault, and, e.g., because of violence, they are at higher risk of dying at a younger age. In general, not much research exists on how the everyday lives of WWUD affect their access to harm reduction services. Therefore, it is necessary to examine different aspects of the WWUD's everyday lives, especially since the surrounding drug culture can exacerbate risks and harms. This Ph.D. project will both build on and support research from Canada, focusing on WWUD's experiences with gender-based violence and the multiple barriers they face accessing harm reduction services. This research fills a knowledge gap in the Danish context, as we have yet to understand how Danish policy and harm reduction services are experienced by WWUD in Denmark in order to develop specific harm reduction initiatives.

The study

Overall, the project is based on ethnographic fieldwork at two low-threshold harm reduction services used by WWUD, with emphasis on their experiences and barriers to the services.

Furthermore, I will carry out qualitative interviews with 1) WWUD about their experiences of everyday life and use of harm reduction services and 2)  professionals at the harm reduction services about their work and how they view risks and vulnerabilities of WWUD.

The data will be coded thematically in NVivo and analysed with attention to the intersectional risk environment framework.

The Ph.D project runs from September 2022 until August 2025.

Funding

The PhD project is funded by the BSS Graduate School, Aarhus University.