Researchers Jonathan Ablitt, Zoe Bezeczky and Sarah Thompson report
on the event, which took place in Cardiff Bay.
On 15–16 September 2025, we participated in the first Annual SERENA Consortium meeting at St. David’s Hotel, Cardiff Bay. The event convened representatives from partner institutions in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, and Wales (UK), marking an important milestone in the progress of the multi-national SERENA study.
The SERENA study, supported by €6.3 million of Horizon Europe funding, seeks to address issues of access to services for children who have experienced abuse. Nine months into the project’s implementation, the Consortium meeting provided an opportunity for partners to report on progress, discuss methodological and analytical developments, and coordinate future research activities.
‘This is the first time I have worked on such a large international project and I found it hugely beneficial to get an impression of the wider team and all the amazing work that is being done outside of my work package.’
Dr Sarah Thompson, Research Associate, SERENA
Prof. Catherine Quantin, SERENA Coordinator and representative of the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), formally opened the event with an overview of the Consortium’s strategic direction. She was followed by Dr. Yulia Shenderovich, from DECIPHer, who welcomed attendees from 22 partner institutions across 12 countries to Cardiff, and provided a snapshot of the expertise brought to the study by the Cardiff University team comprising colleagues from DECIPHer, Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health, CASCADE, and the Division of Population Medicine.
Over the course of two days, delegates shared updates from a number of the study’s work packages, discussed cross-cutting themes, and identified opportunities for further collaboration and integration across the study components.
Meetings of the SERENA Executive Committee and the General Assembly were also held during the Cardiff Bay Consortium, providing a forum to discuss matters of governance and strategic planning.
‘The sheer scale and ambition of the SERENA project was made palpable by bringing together so many passionate researchers from across Europe into that conference room in the Bay – all with the shared goal of building an evidence base to help improve post-abuse service support. It really put our work in Wales into context and showed the massive international potential of its impact.’
Dr Jonathan Ablitt, Research Associate, SERENA
The SERENA study comprises 21 work packages encompassing a range of methodological and thematic areas. Two of these, are coordinated by Dr. Yulia Shenderovich (DECIPHer) and Dr. Ulugbek Nurmatov (MEDIC) here at Cardiff University, and involve researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark) and Observatoire Régional de la Santé de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (France).
Cardiff University-led work involves a review of qualitative, quantitative, and grey literature, including relevant policy documents, as well as a comparative qualitative interview study with health and social care professionals and individuals with lived experience of abuse during childhood, conducted across the three constituent countries: Denmark, France, and Wales. These work packages aim to generate a robust evidence base to inform improvements in access pathways and service responses for children affected by abuse, alongside further analyses conducted by other work packages.
‘We are delighted to be a part of such a wide-reaching collaboration, and are already learning a lot from the process of establishing a harmonised data collection approach across countries.’
Dr Yulia Shenderovich, Cardiff University Principal Investigator for SERENA & Qualitative Work Package Lead
Further information about SERENA is available on the project’s website: https://www.serena-horizon.eu/.