Ruth is a lecturer in criminology in VU Law School and a researcher in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC).

Ruth is currently leading the Graduate Certificate in Crime Prevention, an Australian first, which was co-designed with Community Crime Prevention at the Department of Justice and Community Safety. This course builds on her two decades experience teaching and researching in crime prevention as well as her work developing units for VU’s undergraduate criminology degree.

She has also developed and taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate criminology units, with a particular focus on public policy, criminological theory and victimology, has published in the area of teaching and learning, and has received two teaching awards for her work. Ruth’s research interests are focused on crime prevention and in particular prevention of violence against women and community crime prevention. She has led projects investigating primary prevention of violence against women in sport (for Our Watch), Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and gender equality in trades training.

Ruth is currently chief investigator of an evaluation of the Empowering Communities program.

Professional memberships

  • Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC)
  • European Society of Criminology (ESC)
  • The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)

Portfolios

  • Criminology at VU Law School, ISILC

Areas of expertise

  • Player rights
  • safety and welfare
  • Research integrity and ethics
  • Sport integrity in community sport
  • Community crime prevention
  • Gender equality
  • Primary prevention of violence against women
  • Teaching and learning in criminology
  • Human-centred design
Ruth Liston

Contact details

[email protected]

Teaching responsibilities

Coordination

LTCP Course Chair
LCR6003 Unit Coordinator
LCR6004 Unit Coordinator
LCR6005 Unit Coordinator
LCR6006 Unit Coordinator.

Supervision

Co-supervision of two Master of Research Candidates
Supervision of four Honours Students

Research grants

DJCS Empowering Communities Evaluation 2022-2025 Chief Investigator ($311,387)

Early Intervention Youth Behavioural Change Project (EIYBCP) Evaluation with AP Fiona Macdonald 2022-2023 (($50,000)

VU RISE Gender Equality Through Employability Skills with Professor Tim Corney 2021-2023 ($500,000)

Department of Justice and Community Safety Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design 2019 Lead ($24,930)

Our Watch Sports as a Setting for Prevention 2017 Co-lead ($24,859.50)

Publications

Refereed journal articles

Liston R., Hamilton G, McCook S. How do representatives from sporting organisations understand primary prevention of violence against women? Crime Prevention and Community Safety. 2023.

Hamilton G, Liston R, Mortimer S. How do sporting organisations conceptualise and operationalise the prevention of violence against women? Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Criminology 53(1):121-136

Liston, R. (2018). Book Review: Addressing Violence against Women on College Campuses Edited by Catherine Kaukinen, Michelle Hughes Miller, and Ráchael A. Powers. Gender & Society, 32(4), 593–595

Refereed book chapters

Powell, A. & Liston, R. (2020). Public Feminist Criminologies: Reflections on the Activist-Scholar in Violence Against Women Policy, in Henne, K. & Shah, R. (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Public Criminologies. New York: Routledge.

Ryan, J., McLean, H., Hamilton, G., Liston, R., Stratton, G. & Hiscock, R. (2019). Embedding Academic Literacies for Belonging in First Year Criminology, in Tynan, B., McLaughlin, T., Chester, A., Hall-van den Eslen, C. & Kennedy, B. (eds.). Transformations in Tertiary Education: The Scholarship of Engagement at RMIT University. Singapore: Springer Nature.

See a full list of Ruth's publications at the Victoria University Research Repository (VURR).