Professor Liz Kelly is a British researcher and activist who has worked extensively in the field of violence against women and children for 30 years.

She is the author of the highly acclaimed book Surviving Sexual Violence and many book chapters, journal articles and research reports. She is currently the Director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit (CWASU), London Metropolitan University, which is recognised as one of the world’s leading research centres on violence against women and has a national and international reputation for its research, training and consultancy work.

Professor Kelly is also involved in consultancy with the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and various government departments and is a member of the European Women’s Lobby- Policy Action Centre on Violence against Women. She was also recently appointed as one of two experts to the EU Institute for Gender Equality.

In 2000 Liz was appointed Professor of Sexualised Violence and awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List for ‘services combating violence against women and children’. In 2006, she was appointed Roddick Chair of Violence Against Women.

Professor Kelsey Hegarty is an academic general practitioner who works as a professor in the department of general practice at the University of Melbourne. She currently leads an abuse and violence in primary care research program and her current research includes the evidence base for interventions to prevent violence against women; educational and complex interventions around identification of family violence in primary care settings and responding to women and children exposed to abuse through primary care and through the use of new technologies.

Dr Ascione is widely published and an expert in the relationship between maltreatment of animals and interpersonal violence.His seminar Animal abuse and intimate partner violence: Associations between the welfare of pets and the welfare of women and children in violent environments will be of great interest to those working in the fields of domestic and family violence and animal welfare.

Dr. Ascione was the inaugural American Humane Endowed Chair, University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW) and is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at the GSSW. He has published articles on the development of antisocial and prosocial behaviour in children, co-edited two books and authored two books. The international handbook of animal abuse and cruelty: Theory, research, and application (2008) was edited by Dr. Ascione. In 2010, he was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Waltham Foundation to study children exposed to intimate partner violence and to animal abuse.