About Charlene Y. Senn
I hold a Canada Research Chair in Sexual Violence and am a Professor in the Applied Social Psychology Graduate Program within the Department of Psychology. I am cross-appointed in Women’s and Gender Studies. My research centres on male violence against women with a focus on sexual violence and campus interventions.
Over more than 10 years, I developed and evaluated a sexual assault resistance education program (EAAA) for first year University women. The efficacy of this intervention was demonstrated recently in a CIHR-funded randomized controlled trial in which the one-year incidence of completed rape was reduced by almost 50% in women who took the intervention compared to those in the control group. The EAAA is now available to universities and colleges through the SARE Centre non-profit and a Train-the-Trainer model. See SARECentre.org for more detail. With CIHR funding, I am now studying the effectiveness of the EAAA program as it is implemented on Canadian campuses.
I am also the co-founder of (and researcher for) the UWindsor Bystander Initiative which embeds bystander-focused sexual assault prevention and training into the academic curriculum.
In 2005, I founded the Health Research Centre for the Study of Violence against Women which brings together researchers across campus for interdisciplinary research collaborations and events.
I teach courses in the psychology of women, male violence against women, and applied social psychology.