Two recipients of this year’s Marsden Fund will look into sexual violence in New Zealand.
101 science teams from across the country are to receive support from the almost $56 million available in grants from the prestigious fund.
One, headed by Victoria University’s Associate Professor Elisabeth McDonald will look at “rape myths as barriers to fair trial practices”. The other, from Associate Professor Jan Jordan, also of Victoria University, will be an analysis of barriers to rape reform.
Jan Jordan says the study will be in two parts, the first looking at police reports of cases that don’t go to trial. “We recognise that the police don’t operate in a cultural vacuum,” she says, so the research will also look at the past forty years of pornography, women’s media, and how rape cases are reported in the news.
She says New Zealand has had a number of cases like the so-called Roastbusters over the past forty years, but hasn’t learned lessons as how to help the victims of sexual violence, and how to stop offending.
The Wireless looked at rape culture earlier this year, with Elle Hunt’s feature Let us go home: The path out of rape culture. We’ll have more on these two studies in a couple of weeks.
You can see all the Marsden Fund recipients at the Royal Society website.
