Creating innovative and just responses to violence
Disrupting Violence Beacon is a strategic Griffith University research initiative focused on understanding and responding to violence in all forms.
Violence is a pressing global problem that is, according to current research, characterised by gendered, racialised and inter-generational harms, as well as complex cycles of trauma and inequality within families, communities and nations.
The scope of Disrupting Violence Beacon’s output will include sustainable interdisciplinary collaborations, international partnerships and projects that contribute transformative responses to human security.
Sustainable Development Goals
The Disrupting Violence Beacon is aligned with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs ) and committed to tackling global challenges around gender equality, reducing inequalities, and peace, justice and strong institutions.
Our focus
- Risk and protective factors: understanding violence through the lens of community and inter-generational cycles of violence—addressing risk, causation, resilience, and protective factors.
- Knowledge translation: innovative translation of new research into policy, interventions and prevention, with a focus on new solutions with community implementation.
- Just responses to violence: increasing access to justice while helping build just international and domestic institutions that do not further entrench violence.
Through research and work on Advisory Boards and Committees, the Disrupting Violence Beacon provides expert advice to local, state and federal governments, and non-government organisations on addressing violence in all its forms.
Feature projects
Listening to Country
Working with incarcerated women, this arts-based project captures audio that can assist in breaking the isolation of incarceration and provide ongoing connection with land and country that are at risk of being lost. Through a series of workshops at the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre, researchers created soundscapes made by the women in prison, who recorded each other’s voices, steps, breaths, heartbeats and poetry.
To Never Forget
This project started when director Peter Hegedus found a 1941 photo of women and a girl killed by Nazis on a European beach during the Second World War. That inspiration generated two short films, the documentary In their Name and the 360-degree experience Sorella’s Story, as well as the full length film, to Never Forget, on the atrocities of war and the struggles of the little girl depicted, Sorella. In Sorella’s Story, virtual reality allows the viewer to participate in the action and connect with Sorella. These films generate a new approach to empathy and space for action that can be applied in several scenarios of violence. Sorella’s Story was recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
MATE's 'Be there' app
The MATE 'Be there' app provides users information and guidance on domestic and family violence in Australia, including ways to help others as a bystander or as a self-help tool. The app translates academic knowledge for community use and has been accessed by more than 14,000 Australians each day since its launch in 2021. The 'Be there' app is the flagship digital product from Griffith's MATE violence intervention program.
Disrupting Violence news
Working Together to Prevent Domestic and Family Violence
12 May 2023
Griffith University stands firm in its commitment to reduce harm and build a better future for all...
Dodging Justice: Characteristics of repeat child sex offenders
26 Apr 2023
Griffith University researchers have investigated the characteristics of child sexual abuse...
Intimate Partner Violence Is Not All the Same
19 Apr 2023
Reducing instances of intimate partner violence is not a one-size-fits-all solution, however...
Groundbreaking centre to end violence against women
09 Mar 2023
Griffith University researchers have embarked on a groundbreaking project to end violence against...
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Acknowledgement of Country
Griffith University acknowledges the people who are the traditional custodians of the land, pays respect to the Elders, past and present, and extends that respect to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions about Disrupting Violence.