Dr Kate Fitz-Gibbon is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and a Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Law and Social Justice at University of Liverpool. She is a member of the Monash Gender and Family Violence: New Frameworks in Prevention Research Program and the Research Impact Director for the School of Social Sciences (Monash University). 

Kate completed her PhD 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 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 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 2016 Kate was appointed as a member of the Victorian Government’s Expert Advisory Committee on Perpetrator Interventions and also sits as a member of the Monash City Council Gender Equity Advisory Committee. Previously Kate was Chair of the Barwon Centre against Sexual Assault Governance Board and a member of the Step Back Think Board of Directors. 

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