README file
About the data set 
Title - Drawing on Forced Marriage: Teaching Tough Topics Through Comics
Principal Investigator Dr Hannah Baumeister - Liverpool John Moores University
Co-Investigator/advisor to the project Dr Helen McCabe - University of Nottingham
Year of publication - 2024
Start date March 2023 End date January 2024
Description 
Forced marriage is a global problem. The International Labour Organization, Walk Free, and International Organization for Migration (2022) estimated that, worldwide, at least 22 million people lived in forced marriages in 2021. In 2022, around 300 people asked the UK Forced Marriage Unit for advice. 
Forced marriage is a human rights violation that is illegal in the UK, and states have committed to ending this practice by 2030 as part of achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5.3 (Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation). Education has been identified as the key factor to tackle forced marriage (UNCSW 2021).
Responding to the call for forced marriage education, the project aimed to demonstrate that comics are an effective tool to educate teenagers about forced marriage and equip them to raise awareness and act as allies to those at risk or already experiencing forced marriage. 
To this end, the project team created a comic that focuses on different forms, drivers, and consequences of forced marriage in the UK, and on possibilities for resistance and interventions to provide support. The comic was trialled in two workshops for 19 Year 8 – 9 students in two secondary schools in England. The effectiveness of the comic as a tool to educate teenagers about forced marriage and equip them to raise awareness and act as allies to those at risk or already experiencing forced marriage was assessed through Likert-scale self-assessment questionnaires that were completed at the beginning and end of the trial sessions. One of the trials was a full-day session at which a mid-day questionnaire was added to the ones at the beginning and end of the session.
The project team included Nottingham Girls’ Academy and Childwall Spots and Science Academy, Karma Nirvana and Savera UK, Nottingham City Council and the University of Nottingham.
We created a WordPress blog to introduce the project team; share the comic, teaching pack, and information and resources on forced marriage, comics, and comic-based teaching; and review and analyse forced marriage in pop culture.
Questionnaire information – summary results of two pre- and post-workshop questionnaires and one mid-workshop questionnaire completed on the day of the workshops (June 2023) by 19 Year 8-9 pupils
Publications from this research - https://drawingon.blog/download-the-comic/ 
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/22233/ 
WordPress blog link: https://drawingon.blog/
Contact details 
h.baumeister@ljmu.ac.uk 
Project and funding information    
March 2023 – January 2024
Arts and Humanities Research Council, AH/X004325/1