Award winner researches elder abuse in regional and remote areas

Her dream is that she and fellow researchers in her field will eventually find themselves out of a job.

Her projects are centred on gendered violence – and she can’t see herself doing anything else.

One of her current projects is looking at victim-survivors’ experiences of technology-facilitated abuse and how technology is used in responding to domestic and family violence, including the use of police body-worn cameras.

Another explores elder abuse in regional, rural and remote areas.

“I’m always going to be doing this work even though it may not always be within academia, as I also do a lot with government and non-government agencies,” Harris says.

“I just hope that my work becomes irrelevant in this space, as we seek to enhance responses and prevention efforts. But in the meantime, this is the field that I am in.”

Harris, director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, is named in The Australian’s 2025 Research magazine as Australia’s top researcher in criminology, criminal law and policing.