Kate Fitz-Gibbon is Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and Professor of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. 

She also holds affiliated research appointments with the School of Law and Social Justice at University of Liverpool (Honorary Research Fellow, 2016-2020) and the Research Center on Violence at West Virginia University (2019).

Kate’s qualifications include a Phd in Criminology (2012), Masters of Human Rights Law (2019), Graduate Certificate of Higher Education (2013) and she is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 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 conducts research in the area of domestic and family violence, femicide, responses to all forms of violence against women, and the impacts of law reform in Australia and internationally. This research is undertaken with a key focus on issues relating to gender, constructions of responsibility and justice. The findings of Kate’s research have been published in books, academic journals, funded reports and presented at national and international criminology conferences.

Kate has received over $11 million in external research funding to support her research. This includes from the Australian Research Council, Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, Australian Institute of Criminology, Commonwealth Department of Social Services, Commonwealth Office for Women, Victorian Government, and Victoria Police. 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 jurisdictions. Kate’s 2014 sole-authored book, Homicide Law Reform, Gender and the Provocation Defence: A Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan), was cited by the High Court of Australia in Lindsay v The Queen [2015] HCA 16.

In 2021 Kate was appointed Chair of Respect Victoria by the Victorian Government. She is the former Chair of the Barwon Centre against Sexual Assault, Monash City Council Gender Equity Committee, and the Victorian Government’s Expert Advisory Committee on Perpetrator Interventions. 

Family violence
Femicide

Intimate partner homicide 
Adolescent family violence
Perpetrator Interventions

Legal responses to intimate partner violence
Coercive control
Homicide law reform
Sentencing

Youth justice
Children’s rights and the criminal justice system