On 31 December 2021, the EU-funded project ‘Protection of Abducting Mothers in Return Proceedings: Intersection between Domestic Violence and Parental Child Abduction’ (POAM), coordinated by Dr Katarina Trimmings, was successfully completed. Launched on 1 January 2019, the POAM project involved also Dr Onyoja Momoh and Dr Isla Callander of the University of Aberdeen, and a consortium of further three research partners - Professor Anatol Dutta (The Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany), Professor Costanza Honorati (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy) and Professor Mirela Župan (University of Osijek, Croatia).
The project explored the intersection between domestic violence and international parental child abduction within the European Union and the utility of Regulation 606/2013 on Mutual Recognition of Protection Measures in Civil Matters in return proceedings under the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention and the Brussels IIa Regulation. In the course of the project the research team actively engaged with relevant stakeholders, in particular judges and legal practitioners, through a series of events, produced national reports on and organised an academic conference to discuss the project topic, produced a project video, published a project article and is currently working on an edited book that will be published by Intersentia later this year. For more information about the project, please visit the project website.