University of Guelph Prof. Myrna Dawson is a part of a team of researchers who have received new federal funding to examine the root causes of violence against women migrants and refugees.

Dawson along with three Canadian colleagues, including the team lead Evangelia Tastoglou, with Saint Mary’s University, will analyze what is behind violence against refugee and migrant women, and seek effective policy responses to end it.

Funding for the project will come from GENDER-NET Plus, an international consortium of research funders in 13 countries, including Canada’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

The consortium’s aim is to support research that addresses urgent societal challenges through a sex and gender lens. Of the 13  projects that GENDER-NET Plus selected, six include Canadians.

Dawson is the current Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice and a professor in U of G’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

She is also the director of U of G’s Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence (CSSLRV). One arm of the centre, the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA), was established following a call for action from the UN’s Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner Special Rapporteur on violence against women. The CFOJA is dedicated to tracking cases of femicide to understand its causes, and recently completed a major report that found that on average, one woman or girl is killed in Canada every two to three days.