Zareeda Rashid

Zareeda Rashid serves as a Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab within the Health and Communities Programme while pursuing her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy at the School of Sociology and Social Policy. Funded by the ESRC Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership, her doctoral research investigates UK support systems for survivors of forced marriage through a collaborative studentship with the charity Karma Nirvana.

Professionally, Rashid is a qualified person-centred counsellor with extensive frontline experience including voluntary work with traumatised primary school children, two years volunteering with Rape Crisis, and private practice since January 2018 specializing in forced marriage survivors and victims of sexual violence. This dual expertise in clinical practice and academic research creates a unique practitioner-scholar perspective on gender-based violence.

Her research agenda focuses on trauma-informed interventions and forced marriage eradication, specifically examining:

• Mechanisms for survivor-centered support in forced marriage cases
• Trauma recovery frameworks for sexual violence victims
• Social policy responses to honour-based abuse
• Counselling methodologies for complex trauma
• Intersectional approaches to gender-based violence prevention
• Implementation of trauma-informed care in community services

Supervised by Professor Rachel Fyson and Dr Helen McCabe, Rashid bridges academic research with practical advocacy through the Rights Lab's anti-slavery initiatives, contributing to evidence-based solutions for survivor well-being.