Gender-Based Violence Consortium

Gender-based violence (GBV) is understood as violence that results in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering, based on a person’s gender, where coercion, or arbitrary deprivations of freedom occurs in public or private life. Gender is complex and a multi-level cultural construct structured by intersecting identities. GBV occurs in Utah, from campus to the broader community, taking the form of incidents and patterns of violence toward intimate (or ex) partners, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, abuse, and human trafficking. The creation of a consortium is central strategy to engage communities to improve health and quality of life through research, knowledge creation and information sharing.

Therefore, the University of Utah's Gender-Based Violence Consortium brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars representing multiple colleges across campus at the University of Utah. The Gender-Based Violence Consortium is an interprofessional collaboration, a campus scholarly network that embodies an academic commitment to sharing knowledge, supporting longterm collaborations through research hubs, creating programming, sharing teaching, and responding to gender-based violence in Utah.

The University of Utah’s Gender-Based Violence Consortium vision is to increase public recognition of GBV, deepen public knowledge of GBV and violence through research innovation and collaboration, create research communities, and facilitate teaching innovation regarding GBV.

Current Status

2021-09-14
Abstract:
The Gender-Based Violence Consortium’s vision is to increase public recognition of and deepen public knowledge about gender-based violence through research innovation and collaboration, creation of research communities, and enhanced educational efforts. During the year of receiving 1U4U funds, the GBVC created an infrastructure for the GBVC that includes a ten-member board of directors. The GBVC has fostered international and local research conversations. Current projects include the finalizing of a visualizing gender-based violence platform (in collaboration with the Digit Lab funded by the University of Utah Research Seed Grant). Additionally, community-based research efforts led by Fukushima and a team of undergraduate researchers to conduct a state-wide needs assessment on gender-based violence. Since creating the GBVC through 1U4U funds, the GBVC created a website, created social media profile on Twitter and Facebook, fostered dynamic web-based programming, launched a research faculty affiliates, and created pedagogical tools, all with the goal to foster and enrichen discussions surrounding Gender-Based Violence (GBV). In the spring of 2021,the GBVC hosted an international web symposium, Visualizing Change, Resisting Violence. This included the premiering of web-performances, Utah Women’s Narratives.