About Us

The Center for Research on Violence Against Women was created by the UK Board of Trustees on February 10, 2003. The idea for this novel academic research center had come from a partnership between Governor Paul E. Patton and President Lee T. Todd, Jr., which resulted in the creation of a university-based research center that would facilitate the transfer of research to the practice field. For the University of Kentucky, the proposal met its priority of advancing research in the risk-related social sciences. In its conceptualization phase, no replica of the model envisioned in this early partnership was found anywhere across the country. This gave the University of Kentucky both the difficult challenge and the extraordinary opportunity to be ground-breaking. The Center for Research on Violence Against Women was established under the Vice President for Research at UK in recognition of the desire to create a strong interdisciplinary research and education agenda.

As an academic area of study, the crimes of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and their attendant risks present complex challenges. These cannot be completely addressed without a cross-discipline, content-specific approach which integrates practice, theory, and research. The Center for Research on Violence Against Women is designed to afford such an opportunity. Thus, the Center has worked for over a decade to strengthen the research infrastructure at the University to promote scientific exploration in the violence against women area. To accomplish that aim, the Center has brought in federally funded grants; on-campus research projects; offered consultation to faculty in the preparation of research grants; facilitated access to data sets; and engaged in other initiatives to support the research interests faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates.

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