Myrna Dawson
PhD (2001) University of Toronto
Professor
College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, Criminal Justice and Public Policy, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Guelph Institute of Development Studies
Research Areas
- Violence and society
- Femicide
- Violence against women and girls
- Filicide
- Homicide
- Sociology of law
- Feminism
- Violence prevention
- Public Policy
- Media
- Criminal Justice
Current Grants
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Partnership Engage. Project: Developing an online global map and database of femicide data collectors, collections, and methods (Partner: United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Insight Development Grant. Project: The 'Living Victims of Femicide': Who are they and how do we support them?
Recent Publications
Dawson, M., D. Filipetti, and H. Sangha. 2026. Beijing 30+ and the global movement to prevent femicide and feminicide: The United Nations system as a societal level contributor to social change. Current Sociology (In press).
Fairbairn, J., M. Dawson and C. Boyd. 2026. "There needs to be action at all levels”: Operationalizing an intersectional social ecological framework for analyzing news coverage of intimate partner femicide. Violence Against Women [https://doi.org/10.1177/10778012261438110].
Dawson, M. 2026. Considering gender-based violence as a form of hate: The invisibility of sex and gender. Trauma, Violence & Abuse 27(2): 331-345 [https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380241311873].
Dawson, M. and D. Haak. 2025. Considering male violence against women and girls as a form of hate: Canada as a case study. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (https://doi.org/10.3138/cjwl.03.x).
Yalcinoz Ucan, B., E. Tastsoglou, and M. Dawson. 2025. Tracing individual experiences to systemic challenges: The re(production) of GBV in migrant women’s experiences in Canada. Frontiers in Sociology 10 [https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1528525].
Kohtala, S., P. Jaffe, D. Chiodo, M. Dawson, and AL Straatman. 2025. Barriers to safety planning for female victims of domestic violence in Canadian rural, remote, and Northern Communities. Journal of Family Violence 40: 53-63.
Johnson, A. and M. Dawson. 2024. Filicide and criminal justice outcomes: Are mothers and fathers treated differently? Child Abuse & Neglect 157. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.107019]
Sisic, M., E. Tastsoglou, M. Dawson, C. Holtmann, L. Wilkinson, and C.Falconer. 2024. The continuum of gender-based violence along the migratory pathway: Migrant and refugee women in Canada. Frontiers in Sociology 9: 1-11. [https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2024.1420124]
Dawson, M., H. Angus, and A. Zecha. 2024. Identifying femicide using the United Nations Statistical Framework: Exploring the feasibility of sex/gender-related motives and indicators to inform prevention. International Sociology 39(3): 309-331[https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809241237440]
Aspinall, M., Gill, C., Dawson, M., & Cousineau, M. 2024. Coercive control and risk in intimate partner violence: Are Canadian police prepared to assess? Policing & Society 34(7): 613-626.
About
Myrna Dawson is a Full Professor of Sociology, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, University of Guelph. She is the Founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social & Legal Responses to Violence (CSSLRV; www.violenceresearch.ca) and the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice & Accountability (www.femicideincanada.ca). She also Co-Founded and Co-Directed the Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative with Vulnerable Populations (www.cdhpi.ca). Dawson is a former Canada Research Chair in Public Policy and Criminal Justice (2008-2018), Past President of the Canadian Sociological Association (2018-2019) and Co-Founder and past Co-President of Working Group 11 – Violence & Society, International Sociological Association.
Dawson’s research focuses on trends and patterns in and social and legal responses to violence with emphasis on violence against women and children. She established the CSSLRV in 2005 with funding from the Canadian Foundation of Innovation to support the establishment of a research center focusing activities on understanding and preventing violence. In 2008, as part of her Canada Research Chair position, Dawson received funding to expand the CSSLRV to create and mobilize knowledge about effective violence prevention through rigorous research, exchange of knowledge to inform policy, and to train future researchers. During this time, with various collaborators, including students, Dawson has been awarded over $10 million in funding for multiple projects at the local, regional, national, and global level.
Dawson served for 15 years as a member of the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario, the first of its kind in Canada, co-authoring the foundation paper upon which the committee was designed, and editing the first international collection on these initiatives, Domestic Homicides and Death Reviews: An International Perspective (Palgrave Macmillian, 2017). She is currently co-editing The Palgrave Handbook on Domestic Homicide and Death Reviews (release date 2027).
Dawson is Senior Advisor and Project Lead for the Femicide Watch Platform (www.femicide-watch.org), which is a joint project of the United Nations Studies Association (UNSA) Global Network and the UNSA Vienna’s Femicide Team. Currently, with the Femicide Watch Platform, as part of a SSHRC Partnership Engage grant, Dawson is working with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime to build an Online Global Map and Database on femicide data collectors, collections and methods. She recently co-edited The Routledge International Handbook of Femicide and Feminicide (Routledge, 2023) with more than 120 contributors from over 30 countries.
Dawson collaborated on the evaluation of the first two specialized domestic violence courts in Ontario and conducted research in this area for over a decade, including a focus on victim cooperation. Because of this work, she was a Co-Investigator and member of the executive for the Canadian Observatory on the Justice System Response to Intimate Partner Violence (https://observ.ext.unb.ca/).
With over 100 publications, Dawson’s research has appeared in multiple peer-reviewed journals, including International Sociology, Trauma Violence & Abuse, Child Abuse & Neglect, Current Sociology, Violence Against Women, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Child Abuse Review, Homicide Studies, Journal of Family Violence, and the British Journal of Criminology. Dawson has presented over 150 papers, including 18 keynotes, in Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She regularly consults with various levels of government and NGOs in Canada and internationally on issues related to crime and violence.
Keywords: violence and society, femicide, violence against women and girls, filicide, homicide, sociology of law, feminism, violence prevention, public policy, media, criminal justice
Graduate Student Supervision
- Ciara Boyd - PhD.SOC
- Abigail Mitchell - PhD.SOC
- Emmanuel Rohn - PhD.SOC
- Laura Aguiar - MA.SOC (Thesis)
- Sam Avery - MA.SOC (Thesis)
- Harleen Toor - MA.SOC:L