The Feminine Intelligence Agency (FIA) is a research and design lab focused on social discernment, covert aggression, and psychological safety. Our mission is to help individuals—especially women—recognize and respond to subtle patterns of manipulation and control that are often overlooked by mainstream institutions. We create tools, training programs, and public resources that translate complex psychological and legal dynamics into accessible, actionable guidance. Our work sits at the intersection of trauma-informed care, prevention, and systems change.

Project Overview:

Coercive control is a form of psychological abuse that restricts a person’s freedom through tactics like surveillance, isolation, gaslighting, and financial control. It can have severe physical and mental health consequences—but because it leaves no visible injuries, it often goes undetected in healthcare settings. Most clinicians are not trained to recognize or respond to it.

This project invites nursing students to take the lead in a discovery and planning initiative. Through interviews with nurses, doctors, and clinic staff, students will explore how to make coercive control awareness materials (e.g., posters, handouts, reference guides) as impactful and practical as possible in real-world settings. The final goal is to design a roadmap for producing and distributing these resources across hundreds of clinics, based on frontline feedback.

Key Student Activities:

• Conduct qualitative interviews with nurses, physicians, and/or clinic staff to understand their needs and barriers around identifying coercive control
• Identify what kinds of language, format, tone, and delivery would be most effective for posters or educational tools in clinical spaces
• Map out a feasible distribution and adoption plan (e.g., how to get these materials into hundreds of waiting rooms or exam rooms)
• Create a draft framework for the materials, including what content should be included and what should be avoided (e.g., re-traumatization, cultural insensitivity)
• Produce a final report summarizing insights, with clear recommendations for Phase 2 of the project (design + production)
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Why This Is Valuable for Nursing Students:

• Engages students in nursing leadership, systems thinking, and stakeholder communication
• Builds applied research and advocacy skills
• Helps students explore the intersection of public health, trauma-informed care, and social determinants of health
• Offers a chance to shape real-world interventions with national reach
• Provides firsthand exposure to interdisciplinary collaboration with legal, psychological, and medical perspectives

Deliverables:

• Interview protocols and transcripts or summaries
• A synthesis of key findings from frontline interviews
• A stakeholder-informed implementation plan
• A mockup or wireframe of proposed poster concepts (optional)
• Final report or presentation