Olivia Shaw-Lovell

About Olivia’s Research:

Gender-based violence (GBV) affects nearly 40% of Jamaican women, with survivors often experiencing long-term trauma-related mental health challenges. Existing interventions are largely shaped by Western, medicalised frameworks that frequently overlook survivors’ cultural and spiritual worlds. Yet in Jamaica—one of the most religiously dense societies globally—faith remains a central, lived resource through which many women understand suffering, healing, and resilience.

This PhD explores how Jamaican women survivors of GBV draw on faith as a practical, embodied resource for mental health recovery. Using a qualitative, narrative-based methodology, the project centres survivors’ voices to examine how practices such as prayer, communal worship, storytelling, and hybrid spiritual traditions (including Pentecostalism, Revivalism, and Rastafarian-inflected Christianity) support emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing.

The research is grounded in lived theology, trauma theory, Black feminist thought, and decolonial critique, challenging dominant paradigms that separate mental health from spirituality. By foregrounding faith as an active, meaning-making practice rather than a peripheral belief system, the study bridges theology, public health, and social justice scholarship.

Beyond academic contribution, the project is impact-oriented. Findings will inform culturally grounded, faith-integrated mental health frameworks relevant to practitioners, faith leaders, NGOs, and policymakers in Jamaica and the wider Global South. Ultimately, the research seeks to amplify marginalised women’s knowledge, offering survivor-centred alternatives to colonial mental health models and contributing to global conversations on trauma, healing, and justice.