School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

Violence against children, Sexual and gender-based violence, Intervention research, Violence prevention, Child abuse, Families and HIV, HIV/AIDS, Violence measurement, Parenting programmes, Social determinants of health, Adverse childhood experiences, Sexual risk behaviour, Mental health

Current research projects include:

ERC Starting Grant 2019 (2020-2025): Interrupting intergenerational violence transmission: a mixed-methods three-generational longitudinal study in South Africa (INTERRUPT_VIOLENCE). Principal Investigator, collaboration with colleagues at University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health.

Previous research projects:

Office for National Statistics (2022-2024): Developing a questionnaire and safeguarding procedure for a national prevalence study on child abuse and neglect. Principal Investigator, collaboration with Childlight and University of Greenwich.

Global Challenges Research Fund (2019-2024): Accelerating Achievement for Africa's Adolescents Hub. Co-Investigator with colleagues at  University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health, led by University of Oxford.

Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (2019-2023): The first national study of child abuse and neglect in Australia: prevalence, health outcomes, and burden of disease. Co-Investigator with colleagues at Queensland University of Technology. 

Sexual Violence Research Initiative: Developing an onlince course on violence against children measurement.  Course is available free of charge here

ESRC Rapid COVID-19 Grant (2021-2022). Domestic Abuse: Harnessing Learning Internationally under COVID19 (DAHLIA-19). Co-investigator with Claire Houghton, led by the CONNECT Centre.

ESRC Future Research Leaders Award (2017-2019): Evidence-based child abuse prevention: Developing measures for observation and evaluation in a global context.  Principal Investigator.

Please see 'Publications' Tab for an overview of my work.

Current PhD students:

• Christina Thurston (primary supervisor)
• Kopano Monaisa (co-supervisor)

Former PhD students:

• Marija Pantelic (co-supervisor)
• Janina Steinert (co-supervisor)
• Lakshmi Neelakantan (co-supervisor)
• Janina Jochim (co-supervisor)
• Mengyao Lu (co-supervisor)
• Chad Hemady (primary supervisor)
• Zhuoni Xiao (co-supervisor)
• Vira Ameli (co-supervisor)
• Mpho Silima (co-supervisor)

Topics interested in supervising

I am particularly interested in supervising students who are keen to conduct quantitative research on child, adolescent and young people populations on the topics: violence, HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, mental health, violence/HIV prevention. I particularly welcome applications from students of non-traditional academic backgrounds and from the global South. I have masses of qualitative and quantitative data on adolescent and young people's health, education, behaviour and violence exposures in South Africa and I welcome applications from students who wish to use this data for analyses.