About — Gender Borders Violence Research Hub

Who We Are

We produce innovative research across the intersections of gendered violence, borders and migration control, to ultimately improve women’s safety.

We work collaboratively with researchers and partners locally and internationally in both the design and delivery of research.

We welcome interest in working together - reach out to us here.

The Borders, Gender, Violence Research Hub is led by Professor Marie Segrave, Dr Shih Joo Tan, Dr Stefani Vasil and Dr Ellen Hyein Cho.

Professor Marie Segrave

Professor Marie Segrave is an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Political and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts at University of Melbourne. Marie has led significant research on human trafficking and slavery-like practices, the exploitation of irregular and temporary migrants, and the intersections of temporary migration and domestic and family violence.

marie.segrave@unimelb.edu.au

Marie has researched and published widely in these areas and has led major national and international studies that more broadly focused on women's safety and security in the context of gendered violence including funding from ANROWS, the ARC, ILO and UNWomen. She currently leads an ARC Linkage project (with Maher & Tan) and has previously been a Chief Investigator and Lead CI on two Discovery Projects, a Linkage and an ARC DECRA Fellowship project (focused on unlawful migrant labour, exploitation and abuse in Australia).
Her research is closely connected to advocacy for policy reform, with a consistent focus on the ways in which systems, particularly the migration system, supports and enables violence and exploitation. In 2020/1 she led the Migrant and Refugee Women's Safety and Security Study, a landmark national study undertaken in partnership with Harmony Alliance: Migrant and Refugee Women for Change. The study was launch via Nyadol Nyuon's (OAM) National Press Club of Australia address in July 2021.
Her book (with Stefani Vasil) The Borders of Violence: Temporary migration and domestic and family violence (Taylor & Francis) is a detailed examination of the relationship between borders and gendered violence.
Marie co-leads the Border, Migration & Gendered Violence Research Hub (with Dr Shih Joo Tan), which brings together researchers within and beyond the University of Melbourne leading critical national and international research in this area. She also co-leads the Gender, Violence & Exploitation thematic group within the international Border Criminologies network at Oxford University.
Marie is currently a member of the Australian Research Council's College of Experts and has previously been the Head of School for the School of Social Sciences, in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. She has served in a range of leadership roles within and beyond academia across research and advocacy. She currently serves as a board member of inTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence, as an executive member of the National Advocacy Group for Women on Temporary Visas Experiencing Violence and is also a part of the Australasian University Procurement Network (AUPN) expert advisory panel.

Dr Shih Joo Tan

Dr Shih Joo Tan is a Lecturer in Criminology, School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne. Shih Joo’s work is multidisciplinary and broadly concerned with the intersections of gender, migration and harm of state systems for experiences of women migrants from all backgrounds, particularly in the context of family, work and employment.

sj.tan@unimelb.edu.au

Her 2021 PhD research investigated the experiences of women migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong. Her recent work is focused on the experiences of migrant and refugee communities in Australia, particularly on workplace sexual harassment, forced marriage and family and domestic violence. She has also been involved in various national and international collaborative projects that examine the impacts of existing legal and regulatory frameworks on sustaining harms, exploitation and violence against women. She is also interested in critical concepts of safety and security for migrant women from all backgrounds, and committed to research that is responsive and relevant to on-the-ground realities of gendered violence.
She is author of the book, Gendered Labour, Everyday Security and Migration: An Examination of Domestic Work and Domestic Workers' Experiences in Singapore and Hong Kong, and has co-authored a series of research reports, Migrant and Refugee Women in Australia: A Study of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace (with Prof Marie Segrave, Prof Rebecca Wickes and Dr Chloe Keel). This is the first national study of migrant and refugee women's experiences, understandings and responses to workplace sexual harassment.

Dr Stefani Vasil

Dr Stefani Vasil is a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice/Migration at Australian Catholic University. Stef’s research sits across criminology and sociology, examining domestic and family violence (DFV) in the context of migration, with a focus on how citizenship and immigration regimes shape women’s experiences of violence.

stefani.vasil@acu.edu.au

Stef’s work has been central to establishing precarity as a conceptual framework for analysing how institutional and structural conditions shape migrant women’s experiences of DFV. This contributes a distinct migration-focused perspective to existing structural analyses of gendered violence. With Marie Segrave, she is the co-author of The Borders of Violence (Routledge, 2025), offering an original extension of border criminology and feminist analyses of gendered violence, conceptualising DFV as a bordering practice. Stef is a member of the National Advocacy Group for Women on Temporary Visas Experiencing Violence and is committed to ensuring research meaningfully contributes to policy and practice reform.

Dr Hyein Ellen Cho

Dr Hyein Ellen Cho is a Lecturer in Intercultural Studies at Monash University. Her primary areas of expertise are gender-based violence (GBV) and migration and her research interests focus on the lived experiences of migrant and refugee communities.

ellen.cho@monash.edu

Ellen’s work has been published in Journal of Family Violence, Journal of Gender-Based Violence, Population, Space and Place, Journal of Intercultural Relations, Journal of Gender Studies and Journal of Specialised Translation. She has also contributed to scholarly dissemination as a co-guest editor of two special issues on GBV in Journal of Gender-Based Violence (2025) and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (forthcoming 2026), collaborating with GBV researchers in Australia, the UK, South Korea and Japan.