Alexandra Lysova

Alexandra Lysova, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. Her research career, spanning more than 20 years, focuses on intimate partner violence and spousal homicide, with over 70 scholarly articles published. Having experienced limitations on freedoms in Russia, where she grew up, she has developed a heightened appreciation for democratic values and has become sensitive to limitations on academic freedom and freedom of expression in countries such as Canada and the US. Lysova received the 2023 Leadership Award from Heterodox Academy for her persistent efforts to protect academic freedom at SFU and beyond (https://heterodoxacademy.org/2023-open-inquiry-award-winners/). Most notably, she spearheaded the SFU Academic Freedom Group with the mission of “promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in research and education,” which now boasts 60 SFU faculty and staff as members. She also led her campus in becoming part of Heterodox Academy’s Campus Community Network in 2023. Lysova joined the Senate and other university-wide committees and working groups and, with her colleagues, works tirelessly across ranks and departments to ensure that academic freedom, inquiry, and constructive disagreement are core to the SFU campus climate. She has been described by her peers as a “fearless leader who inspires others to be brave about speaking openly and challenging the status quo.”
Dr. Lysova holds two doctoral degrees. Her Doctor of Sciences degree in Sociology comes from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg (2009), and her PhD in Criminology from the University of Toronto (2015). While her research initially focused on intimate partner violence against women and children in Russia and internationally, her recent work has centered on men's experiences of intimate partner violence, including victimization, help-seeking behavior, and issues involving children. She draws on the results of international focus groups, the Canadian General Social Survey on Victimization, and the Homicide Survey. Dr. Lysova has also served as a member of the Working Groups for Statistics Canada, focusing on gender-based violence and homicide.
Despite it being a controversial topic, Lysova persisted in hearing the voices of men who suffered from abuse and insisted on having an honest conversation about the bidirectionality of abuse and the experiences of abuse by individuals regardless of their gender. She authored two articles in The Conversation that discussed the implications of the Johnny Depp trial (https://theconversation.com/depp-v-heard-verdict-is-a-turning-point-in-discussion-of-intimate-partner-violence-184424) and called for more efforts to help male victims of domestic abuse (https://theconversation.com/helping-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse-can-benefit-society-as-a-whole-196712). For this work, she was the recipient of the 2022 Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy (https://www.sfu.ca/publicsquare/events/2022/2022-sterling-prize.html).
Her earlier research has been supported by prestigious foundations, including the Fulbright Foundation at New York University (2003-2004), the Alexander Humboldt Foundation at the Max Planck Institute (2006-2007), the Carnegie Foundation at the University of New Hampshire (2009), and the Trudeau Foundation at the University of Toronto (2011-2015), as well as the U.S. Library of Congress (2003) and the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, Germany (2013, 2018).