Contact:

Margaret Jackson, FREDA Centre, SFU Criminology, 778.782.4040, margarej@sfu.ca

Katherine Rossiter, FREDA Centre, SFU Criminology, 778.782.5248, rossiter@sfu.ca


Scott McLean, SFU Vancouver, 778.782.5151, srmclean@sfu.ca

Simon Fraser University’s FREDA Centre for Research on Violence Against Women and Children will host a national conference on sexual and domestic violence against women and girls November 7-9 at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Hotel.

The National Research Day Conference is expected to attract more than 250 delegates, from front-line service providers and anti-violence workers to criminal justice personnel, government policy makers and academic researchers. It will explore current practices, offer training workshops and review recent research.

International experts speaking at the conference include Beverley Jacobs, past president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, Elizabeth Sheehy, University of Ottawa law professor and Liz Kelly, London Metropolitan University professor of sexualized violence.

“[The conference] emphasizes the need to consider sexual violence as part of the continuum of violence against women, while acknowledging that sexual violence also occurs within the context of domestic violence,” says FREDA director Margaret Jackson.

“These issues are particularly salient in B.C., given the number of missing and murdered aboriginal women in the province, and high profile of such cases in the Downtown Eastside and along the Highway of Tears, but these same issues have certainly emerged elsewhere in Canada.”

While the conference is for delegates (registration available online), the public is invited to attend the Ting Forum on Justice Policy on November 7, at 7 p.m.

Jacobs will give the free public lecture, which requires registration, discussing the cycle of harm and healing that Aboriginal women in Canada have experienced.

The National Research Day Conference is organized in partnership with the Ending Violence Association of British Columbia, the BC Society of Transition Houses, and the Canadian Observatory on the Justice System's Response to Intimate Partner Violence.

Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.

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