Nicola Henry

Professor Nicola Henry is an Australian Research Courncil (ARC) Future Fellow and Deputy Director of the Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT University. She is a socio-legal scholar with over 25 years research experience in the gender-based violence field. Her research, focusing on the prevalence, nature and impacts of online and offline sexual abuse, has had a significant impact on law, policy and educational reform in Australia and internationally. Nicola is a member of the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group. She regularly provides advice to technology companies to help shape their policies and practices around sexual violence and harmful online content. She was Expert Advisor on the development of the eSafety Office’s image-based abuse portal as well as the award-winning eSafety Women: Online Training for Frontline Workers.

Nicola ARC Future Fellowship project examines the role of digital tools, services and platforms for detecting, preventing and responding to image-based sexual abuse. She is leading two Google-funded projects, including one involving a survey on image-based sexual abuse in ten different countries, and the other investigating the prevalence, nature and harms of AI-generated image-based sexual abuse (also known as “deepfake pornography”). She was also a Chief Investigator on an Attorney-General Department project on alternative reporting options for sexual assault survivors (led by Prof. Georgina Heydon, RMIT).

Nicola's books include: War and Rape: Law, Memory and Justice (2011: Routledge); Preventing Sexual Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Overcoming a Rape Culture (2014: Palgrave Macmillan; co-edited with A. Powell); Rape Justice: Beyond the Criminal Law (2015: Palgrave Macmillan; co-edited with A. Powell & A. Flynn); Sexual Violence in a Digital Age (2017: Palgrave Macmillan; co-authored with A. Powell); Image-Based Sexual Abuse: A Study of the Causes and Consequences of Non-Consensual Nude or Sexual Imagery (2021: Routledge; co-authored with C. McGlynn, A. Flynn, K. Johnson, A. Powell & A. Scott); and The Emerald Handbook on Technology-Facilitated Violence and Abuse (2021: Emerald; co-edited with J. Bailey & A. Flynn). She has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Computers in Human Behavior, Violence Against Women, Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, Gender & Society, and The Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Nicola completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in Criminology in 2005; a Masters of Arts in Political Science in 2000; and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in 1997.