Qualificaitons

LLB/Comm;MA;PhD

Memberships

Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences

Overview

Emeritus Professor McCulloch is a criminologist. She was the inaugural Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre in the School of Social Sciences (2016-2020). She has degrees in Law and Commerce from Melbourne University and a Masters and a PhD in Criminology also from Melbourne University. Her early research investigated the growing integration of war and crime, police and the military and security and crime control and the implications of this for justice. Her book Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Australia (2001) considers the contemporary rise and normalisation of police militarisation. Her research continues to focus on this topic, particularly in the context of counter terrorism. In this context her research examines a temporal shift from post crime to pre-crime. Her book Pre-Crime: Pre-emption, Precaution and the Future (with Dean Wilson) is the first indepth investigation of pre-crime. Recent research projects focus on family violence including risk, women's security, the connections between family violence, particularly intimate partner violence, and mass casualty incidents and police accountability. In 2021 she was commissioned (along with Prof. JaneMaree Maher) by the Canadian Mass Casualty Commission to provide a report and provide expert evidence on the connections between gender-based violence and mass casualty incidents. In 2023 she provided expert evidence on the nature and impacts of police militarisaton to a Northern Territory coronial inquest into the fatal police shooting of an Aboriginal teenager. She has also provided expert testimony to the Victorian Yoorrook Commission on the links between policing and the ongoing process and impacts of colonialism on First nations peoples and the need for robust and independent police accountability.   

Industry Experience.

Prior to completing her PhD, Professor McCulloch worked at a women’s refuge and for many years as a legal practitioner specialising in policing, gendered crimes and social justice.

As a community lawyer she worked as a duty lawyer on the family violence list; wrote, researched and contributed to many policy papers and submissions to government on aspects of law and law reform; was a media spokesperson on a broad range of law, access to justice and social justice issues; the Chair of Victoria Legal Aid grant review panel and; provided legal advice, assistance and representation to clients. In addition to this Professor McCulloch authored significant legal education materials including Victoria Legal Aids’ booklet on Sexual Assault and the Law.

Professor McCulloch was on the Minister for Women and the Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Taskforce for the prevention of family violence. Along with colleagues from the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre she was contracted by the Department of Health and Human Services, Family Safety Victoria and Victoria Police to implement numerous recommendations of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (2016).  

Professor McCulloch was Chief Investigator on two large Australian Research Council funded grants with Victoria Police on counter-terrorism policing and hate crime.

Recent Research Projects.

Professor McCulloch was lead Chief Investigator on a Department of Human and Health Services contract to conduct a comprehensive review of the Victorian Family Violence Common Risk Assessment and Management Framework. During the course of this review, conducted over 10 weeks, more than 1,100 people were consulted from more than 125 organisations across Victoria. The innovation and success of this project was recognised by the 2016 Dean’s Award for research impact and the project's nomination for a B/HERT best community engagement award and shortlisting for the CHASS distinctive work prize.  

Professor McCulloch has been lead investigator on other projects implementing recommendations made by the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. These include revision of the Men's Behaviour Change Program minimum standards, the evaluation of the Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme, and an evaluation of the police use of digitally recorded evidence in chief in family violence matters. 

Awards for Research Quality and Impact.

2020 American Society of Criminology best journal article award for 'Lone Wolf Terrorism through a gendered lens: Men turning violent or violent men behaving violently' Critical Criminology (2019) 27, 437-450. (McCulloch, J, Walklate, S, Maher, J, Fitzgibbon, K & McGowan,J).

2017 The Review of the Victorian Common Risk Assessment and Risk Management Framework Shorlisted for the CHASS distinctive work prize.  

2016 Dean’s award for research impact - Strengthening Victoria’s Integrated Family Violence System (McCulloch, J, Maher, J, Fitz-Gibbon, K, Segrave, M, and Roffee, J).

2005 Griffith University Prize for Research Improving Policing for Women – Presented by the Australasian Society for Women and Policing for ‘Brute Force: The Need for Affirmative Action in Victorian Police’

Career Overview

• As inaugural Professor of Criminology at Monash, guided the discipline over a decade from being a new and emerging presence to one of the largest and most successful disciplines in the social sciences, within the university and internationally. Monash Criminology was raked 5, 'well above world standard' in the most recent Excellence in Research Australia assessment round.
• Inaugural Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, which leads a national and international progam of family violence research.
• Head of the School of Social Sciences at Monash (2011-2013).
• Held seven major federal government grants, including lead Investigator on three Australian Research Centre Discovery grants.
• Authored or edited 12 books and three special editions of journals.
• Keynote speaker at various prestigious international conferences on women and incarceration, counter terrorism policing, risk and social justice, and femicide.
• Invited plenary speaker at numerous discipline and industry conferences.
• Published widely in popular and practitioner magazines and journals.
• Frequent contributor to media in opinion pieces and as an expert commentator on crime, policing, gender and social justice issues.
• Provided expert evidence to coronial inquests as well as Australian and international commissions on police militarisation, police accountability and mass casualty incidents.
• Published in the discipline's leading journals, including the British Journal of Criminology, Theoretical Criminology and Punishment and Society.
• Journal articles and chapters reproduced in collections of the discipline's most influential contributions.
• Supervised c. 20 post graduate students to completion.