As the Academic Director of the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, I lead a fantastic and dedicated team of students and research associates who are working to understand and prevent violence in relationships.

Most of my research is done in collaboration with community partners. Some of the current questions we are exploring are:

What is needed to more effectively prevent gender-based and sexual violence on university and college campuses?
How can workplaces do a better job recognizing and responding to employees at risk for lethal domestic violence?
What will it take to implement changes needed to prevent domestic homicide?
How can we promote safe and healthy fathering?
What does it take to change patterns of abusive behaviour?
How can child protection services more effectively improve the safety and well-being of children exposed to domestic violence?
How can we best recognize and support the expertise of specialist service providers in gender-based violence?
What supports are needed to push forward change in family courts?
Visit our Research webpage to learn more about the Centre’s projects, including our Learning Network and the public education campaign, Neighbours, Friends and Families. You can also follow the Centre on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, and join our mailing list.

As for me, I got my BA in Psychology from Queen’s University and my MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Western. I have spent most of my career at the University of Toronto where I held a Canada Research Chair in Child Abuse Prevention and Intervention. I moved to Western a few years ago. The Caring Dads program that I helped developed is currently running across Canada as well as in the US, UK, Australia and a number of European countries.