The University of Connecticut recently launched the Center for Research on Sexual Violence and Empowerment. Housed in the university’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), the new center will focus on advancing efforts to prevent sexual violence on college campuses.
Lisa A. Eaton, professor of human development and family sciences, has been named the inaugural director of the Center for Research on Sexual Violence and Empowerment. Under Dr. Eaton’s leadership and interdisciplinary engagement with students and faculty, the new initiative plans to facilitate research and develop interventions at the individual, community, and policy levels to combat sexual violence.
“There needs to be an important synergy between research and policy, and these findings must get to key stakeholders and impacted communities,” said Dr. Eaton. “A center like this cannot just be exclusively focused on research. The research has to be used to inform policy and it has to reach and engage college students.”
A principal investigator with InCHIP since 2011, Dr. Eaton currently serves as associate director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research and Evaluation Project and associate director of the Sexuality, Health, Intersectional Experiences Lab. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Connecticut.