February 2026
Honouring Aiia Maasarwe and Her Ongoing Legacy
Each year, our first newsletter honours the legacy of La Trobe University student Aiia Maasarwe. January marks the anniversary of Aiia's death, when tragically a man raped and murdered her while getting off the tram near campus in 2019. The anniversary of her death remains a profound and painful reminder of the devastating impact of gender-based violence on individuals, families, and communities, while also reinforcing the importance of our ongoing commitment to prevention work.
Following Aiia’s murder, La Trobe University, in conjunction with the Victorian Government, established the Aiia Maasarwe Memorial Research Scholarship. Created to honour Aiia’s life, the scholarship supports graduate research focused on women’s safety and aims to contribute to evidence-informed approaches to preventing gender-based violence.
Through this scholarship and related initiatives, Aiia’s legacy continues to shape research, policy, and practice. As a community, we remain committed to carrying this work forward and to advancing safer, more equitable environments for all.
This year, we hear from the inaugural scholarship recipient Cecilia Milagro Bravo Huaynates with a reflection on her studies and where she is now:
"The Aiia Maasarwe Scholarship supported my PhD research into the emotional journeys of women activists involved in mobilisations against gender violence. Through this work, I explored how emotions such as anger and grief can become forces for collective action, and how solidarity is created when women come together and place their bodies in the public space to demand change.
I am currently preparing my first journal publication following my graduation last year. I am deeply grateful for the financial support the scholarship provided, which enabled me to complete this research. Aiia’s legacy continues to shape my academic path, inspiring me to expand my work in gender studies and to honour her name through research that contributes to feminist knowledge and social transformation."
To Support the Aiia Maasarwe Scholarship, donate here.
Aiia’s legacy also sparked prevention work by ReGEN – TramLAB: Improving the Safety of Women and Girls on Public Transport. Find out more here.
ReGEN Monthly Meeting
Date: Thursday 19 Feb 2026
Time: 12.30pm AEDT
Dr Kirsty Forsdike
Kirsty is the Associate Dean, Research and Industry Engagement in the Rural Health School at La Trobe. She is an Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow and part of the managing team of ReGEN: Reducing Gender-Based Violence Research Group in the Violet Vines Marshman Centre for Rural Health Research. Her research focuses on organisational responses to gender based interpersonal violence, through a feminist socio-ecological lens.
Addressing gender-based violence against women in sport: strengthening sports integrity, unity response to disclosures
Gender-based violence against women is occurring across all levels of Australian sport – from the community to the national and international level. Yet, despite growing public attention and an expanding integrity framework, the current systems intended to protect women remain fragmented, difficult to navigate, and not designed with gendered violence in mind. This project set out to understand how women experience disclosure pathways in sport today, how policy and practice are functioning on the ground, and what a stronger, more survivor-centred system should look like.
Funded by the International Olympic Committee's Olympic Studies Grant Programme, the project brought together policy analysis, a systematic review, interviews with both integrity practitioners and women and gender-diverse people who had experienced and attempted to report gender-based violence within Australian sport. Taken together, this work provides the clearest evidence to date of where sport’s current approaches fall short, and what needs to change. The resulting output was a toolkit for Australian sport, launched on 11th February.
Access our brand new website with more information about the ReGEN Network here.
Opportunities
🚨Job opportunities
PhD scholarship Opportunity: The Reducing Gender-Based Violence Research Group are seeking a PhD candidate for a fully funded doctoral project scholarship. The successful PhD candidate will conduct research that complements and informs the work of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, “Creating Safer Sport Communities from Rural to Urban Australia” (Safer Sport Project). Please read the PhD Scholarship details and review and confirm your La Trobe University PhD eligibility requirements before contacting Associate Professor Kirsty Forsdike (see application process).
🚨 Research Participation Opportunities
Expression of Interests (EOIs): Decolonial Feminist Scholarship and Activism AWGSA & Monash
are inviting EOIs from people engaging with decolonial feminisms as lived, political practice, rooted in resistance, care, creativity, and collective imagination!
Come as you are. Bring something finished, in progress, or still forming. If you’re unsure whether it “fits” [it probably does].
🗓 EOI Deadline: 25 Feb 2026
⏰ Symposium: 23 May 2026 in Naarm [Melbourne]
📌 More Information + Form.
The 2026 National Family, Domestic & Sexual Violence Workforce Survey is now open!
This important survey is gathering insights from the specialist workforce across Australia. Your voice matters and will help shape future supports, policies, and services.
Whether you work directly with victim-survivors or support the sector in policy, training or allied roles, this is your chance to contribute to meaningful national change. Take the survey here.
📢 Professional Development / Short Courses
Internal LTU: Respect at La Trobe, aka Prevention and Inclusion, work to support and uphold everyone's right to a safe, healthy, respectful and inclusive environment for study or work at La Trobe.
Respect at La Trobe offer a range of free, evidence based professional development training options to support respect and well-being for staff.
Respect @ La Trobe: 2026 Training - Intranet
Events
🥁INTERNAL EVENTS
Contact us with you're upcoming events @ regen.network@latrobe.edu.au
🥁EXTERNAL EVENTS
Women with Disabilities Victoria’s Gender and Disability Workforce Development Team is once again excited to offer their professional development program on the Preventing Gender and Disability Based Violence in March 2026.
Registrations are now open for a 2-part online workshop for social and community service professionals to learn about how gender and disability inequality drives violence and how we can all prevent it. Register online.
Women's Health In the North event
Registrations are now open!
Join Zoe Belle Gender Collective (ZBGC) and Women’s Health In the North for the launch of 'Allyship in Action: Frameworks for Trans and Gender Diverse Inclusion in Prevention of Gender-Based Violence Initiatives'.
This webinar will provide practical strategies to embed trans and gender diverse inclusion in primary prevention, strengthen partnerships and address backlash with confidence.
📅 Wednesday 4 March
🕒 10.30 am–12.00 pm
🔗 Learn more and Register: https://lnkd.in/gXQMBmhW
Publications and Resources
📢Conferences & Call for Abstracts
PreventX Conference by Safe + Equal - PreventX is Australia’s leading conference on the prevention of family and gender-based violence, bringing together practitioners to reflect, connect and explore how storytelling can drive meaningful and lasting change.
Two-day in-person conference, Tuesday 24 & Wednesday 25 March 2026, 9:30am – 5pm. Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Advance tickets are on sale now!
2026 World Safety Conference
Safety 2026 is deliberately designed as far more than a traditional scientific meeting. It is a multi-layered convening experience—intellectually rigorous, professionally rewarding, and socially meaningful—created to justify one of the most valuable commitments a delegate can make: their time.
Current calls for abstract submissions - 14th February, see more info here.
2026 Asia Pacific Coercive Control & Children Conference
Roundhouse at UNSW March 17-19
This three-day gathering will unite hundreds of practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and advocates from across the Asia Pacific region. More info here.
Women Deliver 2026 Conference in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia from 27–30 April 2026 — a bold, inclusive gathering of more than 6,500 advocates from across feminist, grassroots, First Nations, youth-led, LGBTQIA+, and women’s rights movements, alongside world leaders, creatives, private sector changemakers, academics, and media. Accepting submissions. More info here.
Gender-Based Violence and Climate Change Workshop 23-24 July 2026 - Hosted by CEVAW and the Center for Security and Peace Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada, this workshop invites novel multidisciplinary contributions on the topics gender-based violence and climate change, with research in one or more location/country across the Indo-Pacific (including Asia, the Pacific, and Oceania).
Call for Papers Closes 3 April
SVRI: Where research,
collaboration, and innovation converge.
The largest and most influential global gathering dedicated to research on violence against women, violence against children, and other forms of gender-based violence, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. 5 - 9 October 2026 - Bangkok, Thailand
More info here.
Children by Choice Reproductive Rights & Abortion Conference Save the Date
Brisbane, QLD on 3–5 September 2026.
Sign up to receive conference announcements and be the first to know when registrations open!
📢Call for Papers
Perils, pitfalls, and potential data (systems) for evidence on diverse forms of Violence Against Women & Girls
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a global challenge. Every number, definition and dataset tells a story about who and what we see – and who and what we don’t.
The Special Issue with 𝑉𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝐴𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑊𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 is exploring the messy, powerful space of data and the systems shaping our ability to see, name and take action on VAWG across the world.
𝗧𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀: definitions, operationalization, data quality, power dynamics, global perspectives.
Deadline for Abstract Submission March 15, 2026
Submit to hello@civah.org
Reimaging Domestic Violence using the framework of coercive control: Reflecting on and celebrating Evan Stark's Legacy
Evan Stark's groundbreaking work has profoundly shaped the field of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) research, with his influential theory of coercive control offering new insights into the nature and dynamics of men’s abuse of intimate partners. This special issue welcomes submissions that explore the application, critique, and further development of Evan Stark's work in the context of research, theory, and practice and in relation to adults, young people and children.
Deadline for Abstract Submission: 19 December 2025
Submit to jgbv-editorial@bristol.ac.uk.
Call for papers: Violence and Harassment: Redefining the World of Work: The Journal of Industrial Relations has issued a call for papers for their Special Issue on “Violence and Harassment: Redefining the World of Work”. Papers may address a range of topics and themes concerning gender-based violence and harassment (including technology-facilitated abuse) in the context of the workplace, organisational, system-level and regulatory responses. The abstract submission deadline is 15 July 2026. Submit here
Publications & Media
📑Publications
Saldanha, S., Botfield, J. R., LaGrappe, D., Moradi, M., & Mazza, D. (2025). Reproductive Coercion and Associated Health Consequences: A Scoping Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380251383931
Bjaalid, E.G., Ison, J. & Bourne, A. Disclosure and Help-Seeking Following Sexual Violence Among Bi+ Women: A Scoping Review. J Fam Viol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-025-01014-9
Have you had any articles come out? Please send them to Hanorah regen.network@latrobe.edu.au for the following newsletter.
📺Media
🎉Congratulations to our very own Prof Leesa Hooker on being named on the Women's Agenda 2026 Women to Watch list of leaders transforming education.
🎧 Listen in to Professor Adam Bourne and Dr Sophie Hindes on Well, Well, Well, on JoyFM, talk to recent research from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University (ARCSHS) on LGBTQ+ experiences of sexual violence. Listen here.
Support Services
Safer Community: Provides expert advice and information for LTU staff and students. Website: https://www.latrobe.edu.au/students/support/wellbeing/services/safer-community
Tel: (03) 9479 8988
Staff Health and Wellbeing: Provides a confidential information, support and referral service to staff. Email: staff.wellbeing@latrobe.edu.au or complete a referral form on the Staff Wellbeing Connect intranet page.
Employee Assistance Program: Free and confidential, short-term support program for a wide variety of work-related and personal problems.
Website: LTU Staff Intranet Tel: 1300 687 327
1800RESPECT: National sexual assault, domestic, family violence counselling service. Website: www.1800respect.org.au Tel: 1800 737 732
Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre: Victoria’s family violence support service. Website: www.safesteps.org.au Tel: 1800 015 188
Sexual Assault Crisis Line (SACL): State-wide, after-hours, confidential, telephone crisis counselling service for people who have experienced both past and recent sexual assault. Website: www.sacl.com.au Tel: 1800 806 292
Djirra: Djirra is a place where culture is shared and celebrated, and where practical support is available to all Aboriginal women and particularly to Aboriginal people who are currently experiencing family violence or have in the past.
Website: www.djirra.org.au Tel: 1800 105 3030
13YARN: One-on-one yarning opportunity with a Lifeline-trained Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Crisis Supporter who can provide crisis support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 13YARN - Call 13 92 76 | 24 /7 Crisis support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
QLife: Counselling for LGBTIQ people, by LGBTIQ people
Website: www.qlife.org.au Tel: 1800 184 527
inTouch: Multicultural centre against family violence
Website: www.intouch.org.au Tel: 1800 755 988
Men's Referral Service: A national counselling, information and referral service for men who use family and domestic violence. If you are concerned about your behaviour, or about someone using violence, call Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491 or visit mrs.org.au
Brother to Brother: Provides phone support for Aboriginal men who need someone to talk to about relationship issues, family violence, parenting, drug and alcohol issues or who are struggling to cope for other reasons. Staffed by Aboriginal men, including Elders, who have a lived experience in the issues that the line offers support for. 1800 435 799 Brother to Brother Crisis Line - Dardi Munwurro
*Please note, if there is a possibility someone is monitoring your internet use, make sure you clear your browser history after looking at any of these pages.*
