About the Centre for Gender and Violence Research

The Centre for Gender and Violence Research began as the activist-based Domestic Violence Research Group (DVRG) in 1990. Over the last 35 years, it has evolved into a centre conducting wide-ranging, high-quality research while maintaining a strong activist commitment to amplifying, wherever possible, the voices of abused women, children and other marginalized groups.

It is today home to leading international scholars from diverse interdisciplinary backgrounds who work on gender-based violence within local, national, and international contexts.

Themes and expertise

Researchers' work within the Centre span a wide range of themes and areas of expertise, including:

Nadia Aghtaie

  • Cultural and structural violence within Muslim contexts;
  • violence and abuse within teenage intimate relationships;
  • technology-based abuse.

Rachelle Chadwick

  • Obstetric and reproductive violence, drawing on feminist theories, decolonial approaches, and interdisciplinary methodologies to critically examine experiences of harm and inequality in reproductive healthcare;
  • questions of consent;
  • the interplay between reproductive and sexual violence.

Aisha K. Gill, Centre Head

  • The murder of women (femicide), including ‘honour’ killings and sex-selective abortion;
  • Coercion, forced marriage, and intersectional dimensions of gender-based violence;
  • Sexual violence and exploitation, including rape, child sexual abuse, and sextortion;
  • Harmful practices, including female genital mutilation/cutting;
  • Women who kill, and questions of policing, justice, and trust;
  • Masculinities and their relationship to sexual abuse and violence.

Marianne Hester, Emeritus Professor

  • Domestic and sexual violence;
  • child contact;
  • domestic abuse in LGBT+ communities;
  • forced marriage;
  • perpetrators of domestic abuse;
  • justice for victim-survivors of gender-based violence;
  • the measurement of coercive control.

Jade Levell

  • Masculinity, vulnerability, and violence, with a particular focus on the interplay between victimisation and perpetration, using creative research methods including music elicitation and craftivism.

Sanja Milivojevic

  • Borders and mobility (including border control and human trafficking);
  • crime and technology;
  • interdisciplinary work on digital futures, artificial intelligence, robotics, gender, victimisation, and human rights.

Natasha Mulvihill

  • Professional and powerful perpetrators of sexual violence and abuse; institutional harm; faith and abuse;
  • coercive control;
  • the sex industry.

Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti

  • Criminalisation of activism;
  • urban and gender-based violence;
  • issues of power and inequalities relating to gender, class and racialisation.

Jessica Roy

  • Child and family welfare, with expertise in:
    • the family court system;
    • children’s social work;
    • health and social care interventions with children and families.

Willliam Tantam

  • Experiences of victims and survivors of non-recent child sexual abuse.

William Turner

  • Supporting People health pilots;
  • interventions for female offenders; and
  • foster parent support in the management of disruptive behaviour.