Nujoji Calvocoressi

PhD Student

I have knowledge and experience in mental health and the criminal justice system. I have worked in the public sector as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor at HM Prison Send, delivering group psychotherapy to women convicted of murder. I have lectured in psychotherapy at Regent’s University and completed research at the Griffins Society exploring the experience of identity change in women convicted of murder. I have consulted for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and contributed to the Inquiry’s workstreams. I have served in the voluntary sector as a Justice of the Peace in the adult and youth Magistrates’ Courts. I currently audit long term and high intensity interventions in prisons on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Recognition

United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy

Research / Scholarly interests

My research examines how responses to child sexual abuse are constructed within relational systems and characterised by dependence, constraint and moral tension. Rather than analysing disclosure, denial or inaction as individual pathology or institutional or individual failure, the work investigates how decision making is shaped interactionally between survivors, caregivers, perpetrators and institutions. The central theoretical position is that actions which appear morally contradictory may function as adaptive attempts to preserve relationships, identity, and material stability when all available options carry relational cost. Methodologically, the research is grounded in Constructivist Grounded Theory and informed by mentalizing and relational systemic frameworks. It draws conceptually from large scale survivor testimony datasets and develops these insights through qualitative interviewing across multiple participant groups. The analytic focus is process level, examining sequences of interactional adaptation under structural and relational constraint. This shifts the analytical lens from retrospective moral judgement to real time decision making under perceived threat to attachment, safety, belonging, and survival.