Kate Fitz-Gibbon

Kate Fitz-Gibbon is Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and Associate Professor of Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Law and Social Justice at University of Liverpool. Kate completed her PhD in Criminology at Monash in 2012, following which she was appointed as a Lecturer in Criminology in School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University. Kate has been a visiting scholar in the Centre for Criminology at Oxford University (2013), The Faculty of Law at University of Auckland (2015) and the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology (2015). Kate holds a Masters of Human Rights Law from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Arts (Criminology and Psychology); Honours in Criminology from Monash University; Graduate Certificate of Higher Education from Deakin University, Australian Institute of Company Directors – Company Director’s Course.

Kate conducts research in the area of family violence, legal responses to lethal violence, youth justice and the effects of homicide law and sentencing reform in Australian and international jurisdictions. This research is undertaken with a key focus on issues relating to gender, constructions of responsibility and justice. The findings of her research have been published in high impact criminology and law journals and presented at national and international criminology conferences.

Kate has received funding to support her research from the Australian Research Council, Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, Victorian Women’s Trust and the Victorian Legal Services Board. In 2015 Kate was awarded the prestigious Peter Mitchell Churchill Fellowship to examine innovative and best practice legal responses to the prevention of intimate homicide in UK, United States and Canada. Kate has advised on homicide law reform, family violence and youth justice reviews in several Australian and international jurisdictions.