Myrna Dawson is a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice and Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Guelph. Funded by the Canadian Foundation of Innovation, she established and serves as Director for the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence (www.violenceresearch.ca). She is co-author of Woman Killing: Intimate Femicide in Ontario, 1991-1994 and Violence Against Women in Canada: Research and Policy Perspectives and recently published in Trauma Violence & Abuse, Child Abuse & Neglect, Current Sociology, and Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency. Her research focuses on social and legal responses to violence with particular emphasis on violence against women, femicide, intimate partner violence and homicide.