Teaching on gender-based violence in higher education: critical reflections from criminologists on stolen land

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains a pervasive harm disproportionately affecting Indigenous women and marginalised communities in Australia and across the globe. Despite the centrality of GBV in criminological research, limited attention has been paid to how it is taught in higher education. This article reflects on our experiences teaching GBV within criminology in Australia and the UK, drawing on feminist, queer, intersectional and decolonial frameworks. We argue that teaching GBV requires more than trauma-informed approaches, and highlight the importance of critically examining the politics of naming GBV, foregrounding marginalised voices, and situating GBV within broader structures of colonialism, heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism. We explore strategies for fostering inclusive and reflexive classrooms, such as flipped classroom design and embedding decolonial perspectives into curricula. Attention is also paid to the challenges of teaching GBV within neoliberal academic institutions and the need for reflexivity, particularly for educators from privileged groups.