Expertise

The Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre (MGFVPC) is at the forefront of research and education aimed at preventing family violence. The Centre is contributing to transformative social change by providing an evidence base for policy change that better supports and protects those experiencing family violence and addresses the cultural and economic drivers that underpin it. The Centre’s track record includes ground-breaking research, engagement with government and civil society stakeholders, and innovative educational offerings.

The Centre has extensive expertise and a strong track record in researching sensitive topics and engaging with hard-to-access or marginalised groups. Recently completed research projects have included Indigenous women, women from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, women with disabilities who have experienced family violence in all its forms, perpetrators of family violence, and key stakeholders from the family violence and criminal justice system service sectors.

The Centre’s work has had a significant impact on the transformation of policy and practice and has a record of bringing together Monash and international researchers to collaborate with partners in government, social services, legal services, policing and health. Centre members have significant experience working with family violence and criminal justice stakeholders across the public sector and has advanced knowledge of the various processes involved in reviews and evaluations. The team has engaged or worked with a broad range of departments, and non-government organisations and statutory bodies.

Centre researchers have an excellent understanding of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022, the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence, the Queensland Special Taskforce Report and other relevant national and state-based reviews and policy documents.

The Centre’s distinctive approach engages with the full continuum of prevention, including primary prevention (preventing violence before it occurs), secondary prevention (early intervention to stop violence reoccurring), and tertiary intervention and response (to prevent long-term harm from violence). Our research is grounded in qualitative and quantitative methods, combined with a well-developed understanding of the contemporary policy landscape.

Members of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre are engaged in:

  • Australian Research Council funded research – competitively awarded programs of research that provide independent, high-quality research to advance the national interest, with MGFVPC researchers undertaking major projects on intimate partner homicide and international students and sexual and intimate partner violence
  • Contract research and consultancy – including on all aspects of family violence, family violence prevention and responses to family violence
  • Policy development – including on perpetration interventions, risk assessment and risk management, mapping and developing linkages, and collaborations between sectors and between multiple intersecting reforms and reform agendas
  • Evaluations of programs and reforms – including large-scale multi-sector reforms
  • Workforce capability building – on family violence prevention for practitioners and policy makers from a wide range of sectors
  • Expert lectures, seminars, industry briefings and opinions on gender and family violence

Centre researchers have comprehensive knowledge and experience in family and domestic violence, including an established track record in delivering timely, quality research projects including evaluations and review on policing, and family violence, policy, reform and research. This is demonstrated through recent projects including:

  • An international examination of femicide counting practices,
  • A national review of intimate partner homicide to identify known risks and potential points of intervention,
  • A study of violence against women with disability and their experience of accessing justice,
  • Understanding adolescent family violence, the needs of diverse family members and current service and justice responses,
  • Examining the use of perpetrator interventions in court settings across Australia,
  • Independent evaluations of men’s behaviour change programs,
  • The need for specialist policing and court responses to family violence,
  • The merits of new laws in relation to family violence, for example ‘coercive control laws’ and specific strangulation offences,
  • A comprehensive review of family violence cases managed by In Touch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence that involved women (victims) who have or are experiencing family violence and whose migration status is temporary, and
  • A study examining the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the nature of and responses to gender-based violence in Victoria.