Victim Researcher Profile

BIO

Heather Hlavka is Associate Professor at Marquette University in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. Her teaching and research interests include violence and victimization, sex and gender, law, society, and social control. With a history of engaged scholarship, advocacy, and education within her communities, establishing the links between theory, research, and students’ everyday concerns plays a significant role in Dr. Hlavka’s teaching and research practice. Her research portfolio includes both solo and collaborative projects on sexual victimization and interpersonal violence, law, children and youth, and feminist ethics. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she draws theoretical insights from various literatures to better conceptualize the interrelationships between multiple manifestations of gendered violence. Her work on children’s experiences of sexual violence has been featured in Gender & Society, Law & Social Inquiry, Men and Masculinities, Violence Against Women, and in outlets such as the New Republic, Think Progress, Salon, the Melissa Harris-Perry Show, MSNBC and Wisconsin Public Radio. Dr. Hlavka’s current collaborative research was funded by the National Science Foundation. This ethnographic study investigates the contemporary U.S. sexual assault trial as a space in which cultural narratives around sexual violence and consent are reconstituted in an era of medico-legal evidence.

VICTIMIZATION FOCUS

Campus Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence, Sexual Abuse or Violence (other than campus sexual assault)

SPECIAL POPULATIONS

Child victims

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Ethnography, Qualitative studies

VICTIM RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Ethnography, Qualitative studies