
Our Beginning
The Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence was established in 2005 through funding awarded to Dr. Myrna Dawson from the Canadian Foundation of Innovation. The award was to support the establishment of a research unit at the University of Guelph that would focus its research activities on understanding the impacts of social and legal responses to violence. In 2008, as part of being awarded a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice, Dr. Dawson received additional funding from the Canadian Foundation of Innovation to expand her Research Centre. The overarching objectives of the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence are to create and mobilize knowledge about effective social and legal responses to violence through systematic and rigorous research, to transfer and exchange knowledge that can inform public policy which seeks to reduce and prevent violence, and to train future researchers who can further sustain violence prevention research. Along with many University of Guelph colleagues whose research focuses on various topics related to violence, Dr. Dawson, together with her Centre’s Research Associates and graduate and undergraduate students, has been actively working toward this goal, focusing in particular on violence against women in its many forms.
CSSLRV News
- Johnson and Dawson co-author paper on criminal justice responses to child homicide
SOAN PhD candidate Anna Johnson and CSSLRV director and Sociology professor Dr. Myrna Dawson recently published a study titled, “Child homicide in Ontario, Canada: Comparing criminal justice outcomes” in The International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice.
- Boyd presents on mass killings as a gendered crime at Iceland conference
CSSLRV researcher Ciara Boyd presented research co-authored with Sociology Professor Myrna Dawson at the European Conference on Domestic Violence in Reykjavik, Iceland this month.
- Mitchell presents on sexual femicide at criminology conference in Italy
CSSLRV researcher and SOAN PhD student Abigail Mitchell presented research today at EuroCrim 2023: The European Society of Criminology’s Annual Conference held in Florence, Italy.
- Rohn presents research on femicide in sub-Saharan African at ISA in Australia
Emmanuel Rohn, a PhD candidate in Sociology and CSSLRV researcher, University of Guelph, recently presented a research paper on “Femicide in sub-Saharan Africa” at the XX ISA World Congress of Sociology, 25th June – 1st July 2023, Melbourne, Australia.
- CSSLRV Researchers published article on Familicide
University of Guelph CSSLRV researchers/associates Ciara Boyd, Danielle Sutton, Angelika Zecha, Julie Poon, Myrna Dawson, Anna-Lee Straatman, and Peter Jaffe published research this week that takes the first detailed look at familicide in Canada.
- CSSLRV researcher one of recipients of 2022 CSA awards
Emmanuel Rohn, a SOAN PhD student and CSSLRV graduate researcher, recently received an award as one of the recipients of the 2022 Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) Outstanding Graduating Student.