Victoria Banyard

Victoria Banyard, Ph.D. (she/her) is Founding Co-Chair of ResilienceCon and co-investigator on the first Resilience Portfolios project. After over 20 years on the faculty at the University of New Hampshire she is now a Distinguished Professor in the School of Social Work and Associate Dean for Faculty Development at Rutgers University and a member of the Center on Violence Against Women and Children there. Dr. Banyard is best known for her work on bystander approaches to violence prevention, including developing the Bringing in the Bystander program. Her research also focuses on understanding the strengths and challenges of women facing stresses such as poverty and family violence and has a longstanding interest in resilience among trauma survivors and others experiencing overwhelming stressors.

She has served as an advisor to the Office for Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, among other agencies. She has received grant funding from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Justice, and other organizations. She is author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly publications, including Toward the Next Generation of Bystander Prevention of Sexual and Relationship Violence: Action Coils to Engage Communities (Springer, 2015). She received her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan with a certificate in Women’s Studies and lives in New Jersey with her husband and three children. Her work is regularly featured in many media outlets. She can be contacted at vb358@ssw.rutgers.edu.