About us
In 2022, the Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in Violence Perpetration: Profiling, Prediction and Prevention received approximately $2.5 million over five years from the National Health and Medical Research Council to investigate the perpetration of violence. (Health and Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence grant APP2015587)
Professor Tony Butler at the School of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine & Health, UNSW is leading a team of Australian and international researchers comprised of nine Chief Investigators and 10 Associate Investigators. The main objective of the CRE is to use a public health approach to tackle violence, including domestic violence by generating knowledge from novel perspectives, and examining preventable and modifiable risk factors.
Eleven projects can be split into three themes: profiling, prediction and prevention. These include the phenomenology of violence, cognitive impairment in older age violent offenders, the lived experience of coercive control perpetrators, establishing a national data collection based on text mining police domestic violence data, text mining child protection narratives, psychotropic medication use and its association with violent offending, validating the Oxford Risk of Recidivism Tool (OxRec), pathways from child neglect to violent offending, the use of violence by young Aboriginal men, understanding the link between head injury and impulsivity, as well as using brain imaging to reduce violence.
Researchers will use quantitative and qualitative approaches including population-based linked data to study associations between violence and individual factors such as early life experiences, cognition and medication use, to better understand violence perpetration and identify more effective interventions and intervention points.
Our people
CRE Lead
Chief Investigators
Prof Tony Butler – UNSW Sydney
Prof Peter Schofield, opens in a new window – Hunter New England Local Health District, and Newcastle University
Prof James Ogloff, opens in a new window – Swinburne University of Technology
Prof Leah Bromfield, opens in a new window – University of South Australia
Prof Thomas Denson – UNSW Sydney
Dr Nina Papalia, opens in a new window – Swinburne University of Technology
A/Prof Adrienne Withall – UNSW Sydney
Dr George Karystianis – UNSW Sydney
Dr Mandy Wilson
A/Prof Jocelyn Jones – Edith Cowan University
Associate Investigators
- Prof Julian Savulescu, opens in a new window – National University of Singapore
- A/Prof Lorraine Sheridan
- Prof Seena Fazel, opens in a new window – University of Oxford
- Prof Michael Breakspear, opens in a new window – Newcastle University
- Dr Patricia Morgan – UNSW Sydney
- Dr Jane Hwang – UNSW Sydney
- Prof David Greenberg – UNSW Sydney
- Prof Kimberlie Dean – UNSW Sydney
Aims
The main aim of the CRE is to improve health outcomes and enhance community safety by reducing violence.
We seek to achieve this by:
- Better understanding the use of violence in key subpopulations that may have unique experiences and reasons for violence that remain poorly understood (e.g., Aboriginal men, impulsive-violent men, users of non-physical ‘coercive control’ and older people).
- Increasing our ability to predict violent behaviour via risk assessment tools and observing factors that may precipitate violence (neurological, medication use and the physical environment).
- Identifying early points for intervention and taking into consideration early life trauma exposures. Evidence points to factors such as adverse neurodevelopment, mental health and neurological conditions, cognition, and medication use as warranting particular attention in relation to violence.
Projects
Contact us
Prof Tony Butler, opens in a new window
Professor & CRE Lead
Patricia Taflan, opens in a new window
CRE Coordinator