Dr Bianca Fileborn: Sexual Harassment at Music Festivals & Street Harassment

Talking Research

Dr Bianca Fileborn is a Lecturer in Criminology, School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. In particular, her current work focuses on sexual violence and harassment. She is also interested in concepts of justice, and particularly informal, innovative, and transformative justice. Dr Fileborn is currently an ARC DECRA recipient. Her project examines concepts of justice and justice responses to street harassment. Dr Fileborn is also currently involved in collaborative projects examining sexual violence at Australian music festivals, and young LGBTIQ+ people's involvement in family violence. Dr Fileborn's recent work includes: an examination of unwanted sexual attention and sexual violence in licensed venues; experiences, impacts and justice responses to street harassment; the use of research in law reform; sexuality and ageing; policing and LGBTIQ+ young people; and, the sexual assault of older women. She currently sits on the Victorian government taskforce on Sexual Harassment and Assault in Live Music Venues, and leads the working group convened as part of this taskforce. Dr Fileborn has published widely in leading criminological and other journals, including: the British Journal of Criminology; Trauma, Violence and Abuse; Gender, Place and Culture; Archives of Sexual Behavior; and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. Her sole-authored monograph 'Reclaiming the Night-Time Economy: Unwanted Sexual Attention in Pubs and Clubs' was published by Palgrave in 2016, and she is the co-editor of the recently published collection '#MeToo and the politics of social change'. She also writes regularly for public forums such as The Conversation, and has published in The Daily Life. In this conversation we spoke about her research focusing on sexual harassment at music festivals, what she found, how music festivals can be made safer for women and LGBTQIA people, what sexual harassment and particularly street harassment is, what justice can look like for victim-survivors of those transgressions. We ended by discussing the Harvey Weinstein verdict. Research discussed: Fileborn, B. and Vera-Gray, F., 2017. “I want to be able to walk the street without fear”: Transforming justice for street harassment. Feminist Legal Studies, 25(2), pp.203-227. Hollaback resources tackling street harassment: https://www.ihollaback.org/research/