S5E4 Understanding and Preventing IPV Perpetration Among Adults

If we are truly committed to preventing intimate partner violence (IPV), we need to understand not only survivors’ experiences, but also the behaviours, pathways, and systems that lead people to use violence in the first place.

In this episode, we explore the complex and often challenging field of IPV perpetration prevention, how violent behaviours develop and persist into adulthood, and how economic and structural factors shape patterns of violence. Plus, we ask what it actually takes to support meaningful behaviour change.

We also examine what works in perpetrator intervention programmes, where current approaches fall short, and why measuring “success” in this space remains one of the most difficult challenges in violence prevention research.

Your host is: Ayesha Mago, Global Advocacy Director, Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI)

This episode’s guests are:

• Kristin Diemer, Principal Research Fellow and co-lead of the kNOwVAWdata course, at the University of Melbourne

• Dr Meghna Ranganathan, Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

  
  

🎧 Listen to learn:

➡︎ How violent behaviour in intimate relationships develops and persists over time

➡︎ The relationship between economic stressors, inequality, and IPV perpetration

➡︎ How perpetrators understand, justify, or minimise their behaviour

➡︎ What evidence tells us about behaviour change in perpetrator intervention programmes

➡︎ The challenges of measuring impact in prevention work

➡︎ Why IPV must be understood as both a health issue and a structural issue

🌍Sign up for the SVRI Forum 2026 here!

⚡Follow SVRI on Instagram.

🌐Check out the SVRI website.

🎥 Watch our film on YouTube.

💬 Connect with the SVRI svri@svri.org and our host, Ayesha Mago.

🎙️ An OG Podcasts Ltd production

Resources:

• Keeping Safe Together: Exploring Men and Women's Experiences of a Pilot “All of Family” Domestic Violence Intervention Program in Melbourne, Australia (2025)

• The role of men’s behaviour change programs in addressing men’s use of domestic, family and sexual violence: An evidence brief (2025)

• Perpetrators of domestic, family and sexual violence: Special collection: June 2019 (updated June 2020 (2020)

• I just felt like I was running around in a circle”: Listening to the voices of victims and perpetrators to transform responses to intimate partner violence (2022)