Reproductive coercion and abuse: the research landscape in Australia and the Asia-Pacific

Reproductive coercion and abuse: the research landscape in Australia and the Asia-Pacific

Reproductive coercion and abuse (RCA) is a form of gender-based violence and a significant public health and human rights issue.

While awareness of RCA has grown in recent years, important questions remain about prevalence, impacts, service responses and policy approaches across Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Understanding the current evidence base is essential to informing effective prevention, identification and support strategies for RCA.

Join SPHERE NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence and La Trobe University for this webinar exploring the latest research on RCA in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Leading researchers and advocates will discuss emerging evidence, key challenges, and opportunities for strengthening research, policy and practice in this evolving field. This event is being hosted as part of a La Trobe International Fellowship welcoming to Australia Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Miller who is globally recognised for catalysing the field.

The webinar will feature presentations from:

• Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Miller – Integrated Center for Women's Health, Tokyo, Japan

• Professor Laura Tarzia – The University of Melbourne

• Bonney Corbin – MSI Asia Pacific

• Arundhathi Lekshmi – Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health

Presentations will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by SPHERE Chief Investigator, Professor Kristina Edvardsson of La Trobe University.

Attendees will gain insights into current research developments, international perspectives, and priorities for advancing understanding and responses to RCA across diverse settings.

We look forward to welcoming researchers, clinicians, policymakers, advocates, service providers and all those interested in reproductive justice and advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights.

About the speakers:

Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Miller

• Dr Elizabeth Miller is Deputy Director for the Integrated Center for Women’s Health, National Center for Child Health and Development, Tokyo, Japan. She is also Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr Miller served as Director of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine from 2011 to 2023. Trained in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and medical anthropology, she has over 25 years of practice and research experience in addressing intimate partner and sexual violence prevention and adolescent health equity in clinical and community settings. Dr Miller has conducted numerous randomized controlled trials to evaluate clinical and community co-designed interventions.

Professor Laura Tarzia

• Professor Laura Tarzia is Director of the NHMRC-funded RESTORE Centre of Research Excellence and co-leads the Sexual and Family Violence (SAFE) research program at The University of Melbourne. Laura is also a Chief Investigator of SPHERE. Her main areas of expertise are sexual violence and RCA. Laura’s work draws on the voices of lived experience experts to understand the context and dynamics of sexual and reproductive violence and harnesses these insights to strengthen trauma-and-violence informed responses via the health system.

Bonney Corbin

• Bonney Corbin is an urban planner specialising in health, violence prevention and public policy. She is Director of External Relations and Advocacy at MSI Asia Pacific and Chair of the Australian Women's Health Alliance. Her recent work has been advancing the concept of reproductive violence as a global health and human rights issue, strengthening evidence, policy and accountability. As someone who is BRCA1 positive and lives with disability, Bonney brings both professional expertise and lived experience to conversations about the complex ways that power and control can shape reproductive autonomy.

Arundathi Lekshmi

• Arundhathi Lekshmi is a Research, Advocacy and Policy Officer at the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH), a community-based organisation led by and for migrant and refugee women and gender diverse people. In her role at MCWH, Arundhathi has worked on national research aimed at understanding and improving migrant and refugee women’s experiences of the Australian healthcare system. More recently, she has been working in partnership with OurWatch, Australia’s national violence prevention body, to develop a national guide for the prevention of violence against migrant and refugee women and gender diverse people.

Professor Kristina Edvardsson (panel moderator)

• Professor Kristina Edvardsson is a Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, and the Judith Lumley Centre, La Trobe University. With SPHERE, her research involves projects on RCA, unintended pregnancy, and induced abortion. Kristina is a Primary Health Care Nurse with a Master’s degree in Nursing and a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health. In 2013, she was awarded a Marie Curie International Postdoc Fellowship from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare to coordinate a research project on the use of ultrasound in pregnancy management in low, middle and high-income countries.