Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma

Canceled Interpersonal Violence Science

The Trump administration has implemented unprecedented cancelations of federally funded research projects, with an estimated over $9 billion in NIH funded projects canceled and over $1.5 billion in NSF funded projects canceled.  Research projects in the field of interpersonal violence, including projects focused on understanding the prevalence and impact of interpersonal violence in marginalized communities as well as projects focused on interpersonal violence prevention and intervention programming were disproportionally targets of such cancelations. These funding cuts imperil the future of science on interpersonal violence, an already woefully underfunded area of scientific research. A lack of scholarly forums to disseminate theoretical models, preliminary and in-progress findings from these projects serve to compound the immense cost of these grant terminations to the field of interpersonal violence.

Under this call, manuscripts will be solicited from scientists who were working on federally funded interpersonal violence research projects that were canceled by the current administration. Manuscripts should focus on some form of interpersonal violence, including childhood abuse and neglect, intimate partner/dating violence, sexual violence or exploitation, or gun violence. Projects do not have to be completed/mostly completed to be eligible to respond to this call.

The Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma (JAMT) announces a Call for Abstracts describing proposed papers on terminated federally funded research projects in the field of interpersonal violence, including but not limited to childhood abuse and neglect, sexual violence and exploitation, intimate partner/dating violence, and gun violence.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Documentation of the prevalence of interpersonal violence in a specific population or populations
• Evaluation/documentation of the impacts of funding cuts on the interpersonal violence field
• Development/evaluation of a theoretical model regarding risk for interpersonal violence perpetration and/or victimization
• Development/evaluation of a theoretical model of interpersonal violence victimization (non) recovery
• Evaluation of the health impacts of interpersonal violence exposure
• Development/application/evaluation of an interpersonal violence prevention program or strategy
• Development/application/evaluation of an interpersonal violence intervention program or strategy

We ask potential contributors to submit article ideas via email to the guest editors in the form of a detailed summary that highlights the paper’s objectives, methods, results, and conclusions.  Of note, we are explicitly seeking manuscripts based on studies that cannot be continued or concluded due to the termination of federal funding. As such, we will consider manuscripts that report on the portion of the work that has been undertaken prior to termination. Submission of an abstract represents a commitment to prepare a paper if invited. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words and describe what is being addressed from the above topics or related ones and the outline of the content of the proposed paper.

Proposed Target Audience

Manuscript submissions for the special issue may extend across fields (e.g., psychology, education, sociology, social work, statistics, criminal justice). The goal of this special issue is to inform researchers, practitioners, educators, advocates, and the public at large of the enormous impact of federal grant terminations on the interpersonal violence field as well as serve as a forum to disseminate scientific findings that can be gleaned from these terminated projects.