To reduce violence effectively, prevention efforts must be rigorously researched, adapted, and scaled across diverse settings. Understanding what works, why, and how prevention strategies can be sustained – and who develops, leads and owns them – is vital to long-term change.

We invite abstracts that:

• Assess prevention programme outcomes, focusing on the effectiveness, scalability, sustainability, adaptability and long-term impact of interventions in low- and middle-income settings, and pinpointing the factors that drive sustained change beyond the project period.
• Investigate combined leadership models, examining blended top-down and bottom-up approaches from governments, faith and religious leaders, Indigenous authorities and community-led interventions, and explore how these can be integrated with principles of environmental justice and the care economy.
• Examine structural and institutional barriers, mapping the ways in which economic systems, urban planning, legal frameworks and emerging technologies for harm and protection intersect with education, health, social protection, housing and climate sectors – and determining which configurations enable or obstruct evidence-based prevention.
• Explore leadership and allyship dynamics, uncovering how context, identity and power shape roles in violence prevention, and identifying the conditions that foster – or undermine – truly inclusive, meaningful participation.
  Reassess decades of sexual violence prevention, questioning why initiatives centred on shifting knowledge, attitudes and beliefs have not reduced perpetration, and evaluating alternative, behavioural-science grounded methods that could offer more effective harm reduction.
• Evaluate early and private-sector models, documenting lessons learned from youth-focused and school-based programmes through to workplace GBV policies and learning from both their successes and their stalled or failed efforts.

Effective response services ensure survivors receive the support, protection, and justice they need. This theme explores the integration, accessibility, survivor-centred design, and long-term sustainability of response efforts.

We invite abstracts that:

• Evaluate integration of VAW and VAC services, looking at how formal, customary, faith-based and community-based mechanisms coordinate across health, justice, education, development and private sector – and how non-institutional responses (e.g., solidarity networks, feminist collectives) and decentralised models in rural and Indigenous contexts fit into the mix.
• Embed survivor-centred, participatory, trauma-informed care, exploring ways to integrate survivor-led networks, community healing and political participation into response models that uphold agency, choice and collective wellbeing.
• Strengthen equitable access to services for underrepresented groups, identifying legal, language and structural barriers faced by LGBTQI+ individuals, persons with disabilities, migrants, sex workers, people living with HIV/AIDS and Indigenous communities, and proposing strategies for truly inclusive delivery.
• Assess cost-effectiveness and funding sustainability, comparing traditional and innovative financing models (e.g., women’s funds, trust-based public financing), examining budgeting approaches and gauging the long-term viability of response services in low- and middle-income countries and crisis settings.
• Analyse legal and regulatory environments, examining how child-friendly justice provisions, corporate regulations, discriminatory laws and inter-/intra-institutional coordination either enable or hinder response efforts, and evaluating harmonisation with customary justice systems, including approaches for engaging perpetrators (court-mandated interventions, behavioural-change programmes, mental health support) to reduce recidivism.
• Evaluate restorative justice approaches, investigating their application, especially during political transitions, and measuring their effectiveness in promoting accountability and behavioural change among perpetrators.

Technology is rapidly transforming the landscape of VAW and VAC, presenting both new risks and opportunities. The increasing use of AI, digital platforms, and remote service models requires urgent, evidence-based responses to ensure technology is harnessed ethically, equitably, and effectively.

We invite abstracts that:

• Explore the impact of AI and digital technologies on VAW and VAC, unpacking algorithmic bias, deepfake misuse, spyware abuse, non-consensual image distribution, online harassment and data extractivism, and assessing how misogyny (including the manosphere) and youth exposure to pornography fuel harm, with a focus on mental health consequences and prevention strategies.
• Investigate AI-driven and other tech interventions, evaluating chatbot support, algorithmic risk assessments, predictive analytics, harassment-mapping apps and live-chat helplines for their reach, accessibility, fidelity, ethical safeguards and unintended effects in violence prevention and response.
• Examine community-led digital interventions and healing technologies, spotlighting feminist tech activism, peer-support networks, survivor-led participatory design, digital literacy initiatives and alternative online spaces that deliver trauma-informed support and collective healing.
• Analyse corporate and policy landscapes for tech accountability, mapping who designs and controls algorithms, identifying gaps in legal and regulatory frameworks (with attention to cross-border standards and whistle-blower protections) and tracing links between anti-gender movements and tech platforms – calling for agile, future-proof laws to address emerging TFGBV.
• Develop ethical, feminist and survivor-centred approaches to AI governance, co-designing tools and frameworks with survivors, standardising TFGBV terminology, disseminating research, integrating diverse perspectives and harnessing technology for awareness-raising, feedback loops and proactive industry responsibility.
• Assess technology’s role in monitoring and addressing perpetrator behaviour, evaluating digital and AI-based risk assessments, emerging protection technologies and ethical safeguards against harmful surveillance, ensuring innovations bolster, rather than undermine, survivor safety.

Improving research methodologies, scaling interventions, and integrating practice-based knowledge are critical to advancing the science of VAW and VAC prevention and response. This theme explores methodological innovations, ethical considerations, and collaborative research approaches that strengthen the evidence base and its real-world application.

We call for abstracts that:

• Advance ethical, inclusive, and locally grounded research methodologies, highlighting cost-effective, fit-for-purpose evaluations of social-norms interventions through feminist, participatory, and decolonial practices, and centering community-led and Indigenous knowledge systems to ensure findings translate into policy and practice.
• Strengthen measurement and evaluation frameworks, enhancing standardised VAW and VAC tools and indicators to reflect diverse gender identities, disabilities, and relationship forms while developing outcome measures that support cross-context learning and adaptability.
• Examine ethical and adaptive approaches to scaling interventions, showcasing implementation science, participatory research, or real-time adaptation methods to capture the dynamics of scale, and featuring case studies that ethically tailor interventions to local political, ecological, and cultural realities.
• Draw on practice-based knowledge to improve interventions, especially in terms of how they are designed, tested, and adapted – ensuring that insights from frontline experience inform research, practice and enhance implementation efforts. Promote survivor-centred, trust-based research partnerships, critically reflecting on co-creation ethics, authorship power dynamics, and tokenism risks, and highlighting strategies for meaningful engagement and long-term, relational collaborations among researchers, practitioners, and service providers.
• Facilitate translation of evidence into sustainable action, prioritising work that turns existing research into scalable prevention and response strategies, and examining platforms, partnerships, or mechanisms that enable ongoing collaboration between researchers and implementers.
• Advance participatory, decolonial, and intersectional methodologies, fostering women- and youth-led co-creation, disability inclusion, and intergenerational approaches to ensure interventions are locally relevant, culturally grounded, and led by historically underrepresented communities.

To drive meaningful change, research must not only generate knowledge but also inform policy, strengthen advocacy, and shift power structures. Yet, persistent gaps between research, activism, and policymaking weaken the impact of evidence on violence prevention and response.

We invite abstracts that:

• Explore manifestations of backlash and political reversals against gender equality, unpacking anti-gender movements, funding cuts, anti-rights backlash and climate-related shocks – and highlighting legal, economic and media counter arguments that have successfully mitigated their effects on policies, programmes and advocacy.
• Explore how research can be used to influence policy, testing practical approaches to advocacy, learning from what works, and tracking changes in policy and systems over time.
• Identify barriers, facilitators and donor dynamics in evidence-informed policy, examining shifts in Official Development Assistance, trust-based funding models, participatory bottom-up policy analysis and strategies for engaging donors and multilateral funders around feminist priorities.
• Strengthen grassroots-to-policy collaboration, showcasing participatory, survivor-centred and community-driven models that bring together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, men and boys as allies, and faith- and Indigenous-sector actors to co-design knowledge translation pathways.
• Assess research’s role in shaping global policies, evaluating its influence on legislation, multilateral agreements, funding priorities and gender-transformative climate-justice strategies across varied geopolitical settings.
• Examine corporate, tech-sector and workplace influences, mapping how tech companies, private-sector actors and corporate regulations drive policy and practice, particularly around tech governance and workplace violence prevention.
• Analyse the impact of feminist and survivor-led advocacy movements, tracing how creative dissemination (art, digital platforms, handbooks), narrative-based evidence (oral histories) and tailored communications have countered misinformation, engaged public sentiment and measured advocacy reach and impact.
• Develop strategies for building feminist-led research infrastructures, outlining long-term, trust-based funding and partnership models that centre survivor-led, decolonial and community-driven research to ensure evidence translates into policymaking and service design.

Sustained progress in the field of VAW and VAC requires long-term investment in mental health, capacity strengthening, and sustainable funding. This theme explores well-being, sustainability, and equity as essential foundations for strengthening the field.

We invite abstracts that:

Mental health and well-being:

• Investigate the mental health impacts of VAW/VAC work, exploring vicarious trauma, systemic burnout and strategies to foster resilience, collective care as political practice, and self-care.
• Assess the effectiveness of trauma-informed, culturally relevant supports, evaluating peer-support models, debriefing practices, digital mental-health tools and community-rooted care, all through intersectional, localised frameworks.
• Identify and develop organisational policies and infrastructures, embedding ethical responsibility, long-term protections for researchers, political safeguards and burnout-prevention measures to safeguard both staff and survivor well-being.

Capacity strengthening:

• Examine multidisciplinary, inter-sectoral partnerships, mapping public-private, faith-based, Indigenous and survivor-led collaborations that connect knowledge production to policy and practice, redistribute power in evidence generation, and build movement infrastructure (e.g., safe spaces, digital security, legal support).
• Investigate inclusive capacity-building models, focusing on engagement with persons with disabilities, historically excluded groups and survivor-led initiatives through participatory co-creation that strengthens local ownership and leadership.
• Assess knowledge-sharing mechanisms, evaluating creative dissemination, accessible toolkits and collaborative models to enhance translation of research into practice, and ensure democratic governance by survivors and community networks.

Sustainable funding:

• Investigate alternative financing models, evaluating private-sector engagement, social-impact investment, match-funding, pooled and women’s funds to support VAW/VAC initiatives, and advocate for core, flexible, long-term funding.
• Examine the harms of short-term project cycles and donor conditionalities, analysing their impacts on community-driven solutions and proposing resilience, power-redistribution and advocacy strategies for more sustainable support.
• Assess the design of funding mechanisms, exploring how to prioritise continuity, leadership autonomy and relational commitments for feminist and survivor-led movements, and identifying new partnerships with multilateral and grassroots actors to bolster a healthy evidence ecosystem.