Kendra Nixon, Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba
Kendra Nixon is an associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Nixon’s overarching research agenda focuses on gender-based violence against women and children. This has included research on intimate partner violence, children’s exposure to violence, mothering within the context of violence, child maltreatment, family violence, and sexual exploitation. Dr. Nixon has conducted research within a variety of institutional settings, including child welfare, the police, the civil and criminal courts, and correctional facilities. Currently, her work examines how institutions, such as child protective services, construct mothers abused by their male partners and the resultant policies and practices. Quite often abused mothers are revictimized by these systems, thus the overall objective of her work is to develop better institutional responses so that abused mothers and their children are not further victimized by the very systems that are supposed to protect them. Funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, Dr. Nixon is leading a team of researchers to examine promising approaches to address intimate partner violence within Canadian child protection services. Dr. Nixon is also an academic involved with RESOLVE, a tri-prairie research institute on violence against women and family violence.