How Huddersfield University research centre is using computer games to tackle violence against women

Established by Professor Adele Jones in 2016, the centre is taking an innovative approach to tackle the issue on a global scale, developing educational anti-violence computer games that are tailored for children both in the UK, as well as overseas in areas such as Africa and the Caribbean.

“Although young people have no responsibility for the prevalence of gender-based violence, they are our biggest hope for changing this statistic,” says Prof Jones. “If we can empower children, raise awareness and help them to develop healthy attitudes about gender, we increase the chances of preventing violence in the future.”

Prof Jones started her career as a social worker in Manchester before moving into academia and in 2021, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for her services to vulnerable women and children. She describes the development of Ni3 as her ‘life’s work’.

“I was trying to understand better what it was that keeps women trapped in violent relationships and why many men think that they can behave in violent ways,” she says. “I did not want to look at responding to the problem, I wanted to get underneath it. I also wanted to understand it in different cultural contexts.

“Preventing it in the first place is the thing that gets neglected, and I think that is what Ni3 has attempted to do. We have worked on prevention by working with young people, changing the hearts and minds of those most amenable to change by engaging them and using digital technology, because its reach is incredible.”

Prof Jones, who has been made Emeritus Professor by the university, has recently retired, stepping back from directing the centre, but is confident it will continue to change the narrative on gender-based violence.

“It is important that I can back off and let other people take Ni3 in new directions, and we know there are so many we could go in,” she says. “We are saying that it is not inevitable that one in three women and girls should be victims, this is not how it needs to be and that things can be different.”

The games are developed to relate to children, according to research undertaken in each different country, and act out scenarios where the player makes a choice that moves the game forward. Their impact on adults is notable too, Prof Jones says.

“To create the games, we have engaged with thousands of people – young people, teachers, parents and all kinds of stakeholders in all these countries, having conversations about gender-based violence. It is the conversation that starts to make the change. We have given children language and information to use, shown them how to get help and helped them recognise what abuse and violence is.

“And we have helped adults recognise the impact that violence has on children. That’s unquantifiable, and I think the games are interventions that are ahead of their time.

“I am confident they will be taken up because when we have trialled them, young people have been ecstatic that we have provided them with an intervention with children at its heart that does not require an adult to intervene.

"They can engage with a computer game on their own terms, they are in control of their own learning. Young people have loved them, regardless of whether they are in Uganda, Grenada, St Lucia or the UK.”

None in Three is a research centre for the global prevention of gender-based violence. Visit www.noneinthree.org for more information.

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