The Ethical Inquiry: Power, Responsibility and the Threshold of Change

Book Launch & International Conversation
 

Date: 9 October 2026

Time: 10:30–12:00 CET

What happens when a man denies the violence, minimises its impact or blames his partner?

We often describe these men as resistant, unmotivated or difficult to engage. But what if these responses are also predictable within the power structures surrounding perpetrator interventions? And what happens when the authority of our institutions invites practitioners to respond with more power of their own?

These questions are at the heart of Ryan Greenwell’s new book, The Ethical Inquiry: Posture, Power and Engagement with Men Who Use Violence.

To launch the book, Alan Jenkins, Andrew Turnell and Alessandra Pauncz will join Ryan Greenwell for a live conversation about its ideas, their implications, and the questions they raise for the field.

Register here

At the centre of the conversation

When should we stop trying to move a man forward?
Greenwell’s concept of the ethical threshold asks practitioners not to rush from engagement into behaviour change, strengths work or safety planning when responsibility is not yet sufficiently available. What does it mean to remain at that threshold, and what becomes possible when we do?

Are denial, minimisation and victim blaming simply “resistance”?
The book challenges us to look beyond individual motivation and consider how these familiar responses are shaped by gendered, relational and institutional structures of power.

What happens to power when we become the intervention?
Court mandates, risk management, assessment and organisational expectations give practitioners considerable authority. How can we use that authority to hold men accountable without reproducing controlling practices ourselves?

Can we hold accountability without demanding confession?
Ethical inquiry offers a way of keeping violence, responsibility and its consequences visible without allowing the conversation to collapse into confrontation, persuasion or procedural compliance.

And what does all this demand from our organisations?
The conversation will move beyond the practitioner–client relationship to consider supervision, burnout, leadership and the organisational conditions needed to sustain ethical practice.

Join Ryan Greenwell, Alan Jenkins, Andrew Turnell and Alessandra Pauncz for a conversation about power, responsibility and what it means to remain ethically positioned when working with men who use violence.

The conversation brings together four perspectives with deep roots in practice:

Alan Jenkins – whose Invitations to Responsibility and Becoming Ethical have profoundly influenced how the field thinks about responsibility, ethics and the practitioner’s own use of power.

Andrew Turnell – co-creator of the Signs of Safety approach, bringing decades of experience in working with families, practitioners and child protection systems where authority, safety and meaningful engagement must coexist.

Alessandra Pauncz – Executive Director of WWP EN – European Network for the Work with Perpetrators, bringing the perspective of more than 25 years of perpetrator work and a particular focus on accountability, system responses and the institutional conditions that shape intervention.

Ryan Greenwell – author of The Ethical Inquiry, whose practice-based framework builds on this ethical tradition while developing the concepts of ethical inquiry, modern power and the ethical threshold.

Rather than a traditional book presentation, the webinar will bring these perspectives into dialogue around some of the most difficult dilemmas practitioners face when working with men who use violence.