Katreena Scott

kscot47@uwo.ca

0000-0002-8521-810X

As the Academic Director of the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, I lead a fantastic and dedicated team of students and research associates who are working to understand and prevent violence in relationships.

Most of my research is done in collaboration with community partners. Some of the current questions we are exploring are:

What is needed to more effectively prevent gender-based and sexual violence on university and college campuses?
How can workplaces do a better job recognizing and responding to employees at risk for lethal domestic violence?
What will it take to implement changes needed to prevent domestic homicide?
How can we promote safe and healthy fathering?
What does it take to change patterns of abusive behaviour?
How can child protection services more effectively improve the safety and well-being of children exposed to domestic violence?
How can we best recognize and support the expertise of specialist service providers in gender-based violence?
What supports are needed to push forward change in family courts?

Visit our Research webpage to learn more about the Centre’s projects, including our Learning Network and the public education campaign, Neighbours, Friends and Families. You can also follow the Centre on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, and join our mailing list.

As for me, I got my BA in Psychology from Queen’s University and my MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Western. I have spent most of my career at the University of Toronto where I held a Canada Research Chair in Child Abuse Prevention and Intervention. I moved to Western a few years ago. The Caring Dads program that I helped developed is currently running across Canada as well as in the US, UK, Australia and a number of European countries.

Recent Publications

Publications in the last 5 years

Refereed Journal Articles

Loncar, N., & Scott, K. L. (2025). Narrative Analysis of Safety and Risk in Canadian Child Welfare Service Responses to Survivors of Near Lethal Domestic Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 1-14.

Jenney, A., Scott, K., Cullen, O., Bittman, M., & Smith, C. (2025). Exploring the Effectiveness of Virtual Simulation-Based Learning in Enhancing Clinical Skills in Social Work Education. Studies in Clinical Social Work: Transforming Practice, Education and Research, 1-22.

Jaffe, P., Scott, K., & Saxton, M. (2025). Commentary: Making the Links Between Children Exposed to Domestic Violence and Child Homicide. Journal of Family Violence, 1-8.

Jaffe, P., Bala, N., Medhekar, A., Scott, K., & Oliver, C. (2025). Appropriate parenting arrangements in cases of intimate partner violence and coercive control: From research and legislative reform to changes in practice. Family Court Review.

Nonomura, R., +Zamfir, D., Scott, K., Jaffe, P., +Bukhari, S., & +Heslop, L. (2024). Engaging fathers who commit family violence: Issues and challenges for family courts. Family Court Review, 62(1), 97-111.

Saxton, M., Bukhari, S., Jaffe, P., Scott, K., Rajan, P., Reif, K., & Zamfir, D. (2024). How to Prevent Domestic Homicides: A Qualitative Study of Recommendations from a Canadian Domestic Homicide Review Committee. Journal of Family Violence, 1-14.

Scott, K. L., & Jenney, A. (2023). Safe not soft: trauma-and violence-informed practice with perpetrators as a means of increasing safety. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 32(7-8), 1088-1107.

Cullen, O., Jenney, A., Shiels, L., +Greer, K., & Scott, K. (2023). Integrating the Voices of Youth with Lived Experience as Co-researchers to Improve Research and Practice Approaches to Childhood Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 1-15.

Scott, K. L., Baker, L., Jenney, A., +Lopez, J., Straatman, A. L., Pietsch, N., ... & Jones, K. (2023). Voices of Experience: Development of the Flourishing Practice Model of Capabilities of Intimate Partner Violence Specialists. Journal of Family Violence, 1-13.

Nonomura, R., Bala, N., +Beacock-McMillan, K., +Au-Yeung, A., Jaffe, P., +Heslop, L., & Scott, K. (2023). When the Family Court Becomes the Continuation of Family Violence After Separation: Understanding Litigation Abuse. Family & Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly, 15(4).

Loncar, N., & Scott, K. L. (2022). “The Average Counsellor Wouldn’t Know”: Exploring How General Health Practitioners Understand and Respond to Domestic Violence. Canadian journal of nursing research, 08445621221107296.

Kertesz, M., Humphreys, +C., Fogden, L., Scott, K., Laslett, A. M., & Tsantefski, M. (2022). KODY, an all-of-family response to co-occurring substance use and domestic violence: protocol for a quasi-experimental intervention trial. BMC public health, 22(1), 1-9.

Jenney, A., Scott, K., & Wall, M. (2021). Mothers in mind: exploring the efficacy of a dyadic group parenting intervention for women who have experienced intimate partner violence and their young children. International journal on child maltreatment: research, policy and practice, 1-23.

Scott, K., Dubov, V., Devine, C., Colquhoun, C., Hoffelner, C., Niki, I., Webb, S. & Goodman, D. (2021). Caring Dads intervention for fathers who have perpetrated abuse within their families: quasi-experimental evaluation of child protection outcomes over two years. Child Abuse & Neglect, 120, 105204.

Thompson-Walsh, C., Scott, K. L., Lishak, V., & +Dyson, A. (2020). How domestically violent Fathers impact children’s social-emotional development: Fathers’ psychological functioning, parenting, and coparenting. Child Abuse & Neglect, 112, 104866.

Dyson, A., David, R., & Scott, K. (2020). Recruiting domestically violent fathers and families for research: What does it take? Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 1-19.

Mastorakos, T., & Scott, K. L. (2019). Attention biases and social-emotional development in preschool-aged children who have been exposed to domestic violence. Child abuse & neglect, 89, 78-86.

Lishak, V., Scott, K. L., +Dyson, A., & Milovanov, A. (2019). General criminality as a marker of heterogeneity in domestically violent men: differences in trauma history, psychopathology, neurocognitive functioning, and psychophysiology. Journal of interpersonal violence, 0886260519858065.

Leef, J. H., Brian, J., VanderLaan, D. P., Wood, H., Scott, K., Lai, M. C., ... & Zucker, K. J. (2019). Traits of autism spectrum disorder in school-aged children with gender dysphoria: A comparison to clinical controls. Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology, 7(4), 383.

Klopfer, K. M., Scott, K., Jenkins, J., & Ducharme, J. (2019). Effect of preservice classroom management training on attitudes and skills for teaching children with emotional and behavioral problems: A randomized control trial. Teacher Education and Special Education, 42, 49-66.

Books and Refereed Book Chapters

Bala, N., Jaffe, P., Scott, K. & Heslop, L. (2025). Family Violence in Family Court Proceedings Providing Effective Responses for Victims, Children, and Perpetrators. University of Toronto Press. https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487567842

Jaffe, P., Scott, K. L., & Straatman, A. L. (Eds.) (2020). Preventing Domestic Homicides: Lessons Learned from Tragedies. Elsevier.

Scott, K. & MacPherson, M. (2024). Why intimate partner violence against women is a workplace issue & what you can do about it (pp. 75-78). In M. Kaufman. The Male Ally Handbook: Building Better Workplaces for Equality and Change, Shopkeeper Press.

Scott, K. L. (2021). Fathering in the Context of Domestic Violence and Abuse. In J. Devaney, C. Bradbury-Jones, S. Holt, R. Macy & C. Øverlien (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Domestic Violence and Abuse. Routledge.

Scott, K. L. & Loncar, N. (2021). Public policy and laws addressing father’s violence against children. In T. Shakelford (Ed). The Sage Handbook of Domestic Violence. Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Jaffe, P., Scott, K. L., & Straatman, A. L. (Eds.) (2020). Preventing Domestic Homicides: Lessons Learned from Tragedies. Elsevier.

Scott, K. L., Olszowy, L. Saxton, M. & Reif, K. (2020). Child homicide in the context of domestic violence: When the plight of children is overlooked. In P. Jaffe, K. Scott & A.L. Straatman (Eds.). Preventing Domestic Homicides: Lessons Learned from Tragedies. Elsevier.

Scott, K. L., Oliver, C. & Cheng, P. (2020). Perpetrator mental health: Depression and suicidality as risk factors for domestic homicide. In P. Jaffe, K. Scott & A.L. Straatman (Eds.). Preventing Domestic Homicides: Lessons Learned from Tragedies. Elsevier.

MacQuarrie, B., Scott, L. K., Lim, D., Saxton, M. D., MacGregor, J., & Wathen, N. (2019). Understanding Domestic Violence as a Workplace Problem (pp. 93-114). In R. Burke and A. Richardsen (Eds.) Increasing occupational health and safety in workplaces: Research and practice. Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, MA.

Selection of Technical reports

Scott, K., Saxton, M., Reif, K., Bukhari, S., Ashbourne, D. & Jaffe, P. (2022). Preventing Child and Parent Homicides: A Road Map to Implement Recommendations from the Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Committee. London, Ontario: Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children.

Scott, K., Khanna, A., Vasudeva, A., Di Paolo, A., & Hooda, S. (2024). Impact of the Undressing Consent program. Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children, Western University.

Jaffe, P., Bala, N. Medhekar, A., Scott, K., & Oliver, C. (2023). Making appropriate parenting arrangements in family violence cases, 2023. Government of Canada, Department of Justice, Electronic Communications. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/rib-reb/mpafvc-capcvf/index.html

Nonomura, R., Giesbrecht, C., Jivraj, T., Lapp, A., Bax, K., Jenney, A., Scott, K., Straatman, A-L., & Baker, L. (2020). Toward a trauma- and violence-informed research ethics module: Considerations and recommendations. Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children.

Scott, K.L., McFadyen, N., Jordan, M. & Crocker, D. (2021). Men’s Helpline Final Report. Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children.

Teaching and Supervision

Teaching

I teach Comprehensive Child and Adolescent Assessment to PhD students in the School and Applied Child Psychology. This course provides an introduction to assessment and covers foundational skills including interviewing and observation. Students will learn the psychometrics, administration, and scoring of multi-rater scales. Students will learn to administer a standardized cognitive assessment. A strong practice component is emphasized.

I also teach Mental Health Literacy and Safe Schools to students in the BEd program. This course focuses on research and practice to develop safe and caring learning environments for all students. Topics include social-emotional development, mental health, mental health literacy, healthy relationships, self-esteem, access to care, the role of teachers in the classroom, school and community, current trends in school violence and violence prevention, and signs that students may need support.

Finally, I teach as part of the CREVAWC’s Certificate in Gender-Based Violence Practice Skills. This five-course professional certificate covers skills for responding to intimate partner violence (IPV) including courses in core skills for understanding IPV, assessing and managing risk and safety, collaborating with and supporting survivors, promoting change in those who have used abusive behaviour, and recognizing and responding to infants, children and youth experiencing violence.

Supervision

I supervise students from different academic programs, understanding that having students from different academic programs with varying goals for their careers enhances everyone’s learning experience. Within my research group, students are organized into teams in which more senior students can mentor more junior ones. Each team is responsible for tasks associated with a particular research project; however, all students are exposed to the work of all teams through regular lab meetings. Students use data collected from research projects for their MA and PhD dissertations. They are invited to help conceptualize and plan research so that their research questions can be included. Additionally, depending on their aims, I am able to support students in developing a range of highly valuable skills and competencies including clinical skills, skills for advanced quantitative and mixed-methods analyses, intervention research design and/or on their ability to work in collaboration with community partners.

My students are regularly successful as applicants for SSHRC and OGS graduate funding, they are regularly co-authors on refereed journal publications and they often present their work at national and international conferences.

Examples of recent thesis completed by students in my lab are as follows:

The Impact of Ongoing Coparenting Conflict on Female Domestic Violence Survivors and their Parenting of Very Young Children, by Alena Lawrence

"The Average Counsellor Wouldn't Know": Exploring How General Health Practitioners Understand and Respond to Domestic Violence, by Nicole Loncar

Addressing Intimate Partner Violence: Effective Risk Management with Male Perpetrators, by Simrat Tung

Undressing Consent–Preliminary Evaluation of a Campus Sexual Violence Prevention Program, by Angelina Cleroux

PhD

A Look into Child Welfare Cases: Risk and Re-reports in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence, by Tessie Mastorakos

The Impact of Domestically Violent Fathers on Children’s Social-Emotional Development: Beyond Domestic Violence Perpetration, by Catherine Thompson-Walsh

Women's Use of Force Against an Intimate Partner: What Can We Learn from Police Data, by Lisa Heslop

Other

I am the Academic Director of the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children (CREVAWC), which is one of Canada’s largest centers of research and knowledge mobilization in Canada. Check out our most recent annual report.

CREVAWC members are regularly involved in important conversations about the policies and practices needed to address GBV in Canada. As a few examples, I prepared and presented expert report at the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission (2021), I was an invited expert witness to federal parliament in Canada (2024, to testify on Bill S-249 An Act respecting the development of a national strategy for the prevention of intimate partner violence) and provincial parliament in Ontario (2024, to testify to the Standing Committee on Justice Policy Study on Intimate Partner Violence), as well as to the Renfrew Inquest into the deaths of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam (2021) which is shaping Ontario’s response to GBV.

Dr. Katreena Scott, PhD

Professor - Applied Psychology