Welcome to the Centre for Protecting Women Online

About the Centre

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The Centre for Protecting Women Online is funded by a £7.7 million grant from Research England. It will be a vehicle for understanding and addressing challenges posed to women’s safety online through a novel, interdisciplinary and ambitious research agenda.

This will be combined with cross-sectoral, collaborative outputs and interventions which inform law, policy, technology development and practice to reduce online harms suffered by women and girls; minimise anti-social behaviours online whilst promoting pro-social behaviours and help build tech/software that helps ensure accountability, credibility and helps facilitate justice.

The Centre is led by Prof Olga Jurasz, Professor of Law and work of the Centre will be delivered through a management and five interwoven Work Streams: Law and Policy, Human Behaviour, The Future of Responsible Tech, Ethical and Responsible Tech/AI and Policing.

Watch the Centre launch promotional video, filmed on campus at The Open University Library in Walton Hall, Milton Keynes featuring the CPWO team.

To find out more about our previous eNewsletter publications, please select this link

eNewsletters

Diagram showing the structure of the Centre. At the top overarching theme of regulation, which covers 4 sub-themes; law and policy, policing, ethical and responsible tech and AI, and the future of responsible tech. Beneath the 4 sub-themes, is the underlying theme of human behaviour.

Media presence

The Open University awarded £7.7m to protect women and girls online | The Open University
Women now ‘expect to be abused online’ | (thetimes.co.uk)
Together against violence: Tech’s role in addressing VAWG and RASSO | (techuk.org)
Open University centre in Milton Keynes aims to protect women from online violence | BBC News
£156m to expand excellent research units in English universities | UKRI
OU research reveals shocking level of online violence experienced by women and girls across the UK | OU News
‘We get bombarded’: study reveals ‘shocking’ impact of online abuse on girls | The Guardian
Almost one fifth of women in Wales experience online violence, survey finds | ITV News Wales
The Open University establishes new centre for protecting women online following £7.7 million grant | MKCitizen

Join our LinkedIn group

To find out more about the Centre, please join our dedicated LinkedIn page: Centre for Protecting Women Online LinkedIn group.

Contact us

If you would like to discuss any collaborations, contact a specific team member or to find out more about the Centre, please email us.

Figure acknowledgement

Web banner illustration created by Annie Christie.

News

Landscape Review: Policing Technology-Facilitated and Online Violence Against Women and Girls.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been described as an epidemic by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), the body that co-ordinates national responses to policing priorities across England and Wales. At the same time as the government has announced a key target of halving VAWG over 10 years, and has made VAWG a national policing priority. However the nature of VAWG is rapidly changing, affected by the digital revolution that has profoundly affected society over recent years. This transformation has been acknowledged by the NPCC, which has described technology-enabled and online VAWG as a priority threat within the annual threat assessment. So what is policing actually doing to address this priority?

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