SESSION OVERVIEW
Under the Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence, providers must actively engage with students to develop, implement, and review prevention policies, strategies, programs and training.
Student associations, student-led groups and organisations, as well as student-facing roles and departments all play a critical and unique role in preventing gender-based violence by shaping a safe campus culture, strengthening belonging and equity, and creating opportunities for meaningful student engagement.
This interactive presentation will examine best practice approaches to student collaboration and engagement, including messaging and communications, trauma-informed practice, sharing power, applying a gender lens, and ensuring engagement is intersectional, culturally informed and accessible.
Drawing on evidence-informed prevention approaches, including Our Watch’s Educating for Equality model, this session will examine how prevention messaging and activities can be embedded into student life through campaigns, events, workshops, leadership programs, peer-to-peer initiatives, and governance practices.
The session will also discuss responding to resistance and backlash, and tailoring prevention initiatives for diverse student cohorts. Through a case study of The Line campaign, participants will reflect on how to create effective student-led prevention practices which foster lasting cultural change and build institutional trust.
Session Outcomes:
- Understand the role of student associations and student-facing teams in the whole-of organisation approach to preventing gender-based violence
- Learn the drivers of gender-based violence and identify opportunities for student associations and student-facing teams to challenge them.
- Identify opportunities to embed prevention messaging and respectful relationships education into student-led programs, events, campaigns, communications, and student experience initiatives.
- Understand best-practice principles for student engagement, including trauma-informed, intersectional, culturally informed and accessible approaches that engage diverse student cohorts and value students’ lived experience.
- Explore practical approaches for engaging students and responding to resistance using The Line campaign as a youth-led, evidence-informed example.
PRESENTERS
Claire Tatyzo (she/her) is the Manager of the Universities and TAFE team at Our Watch, and a Specialist Advisor (Universities) for the Our Watch Institute. With over 15 years’ experience advancing gender equality and the primary prevention of gender-based violence across a range of sectors, Claire leads higher education sector partnerships and the design of initiatives that embed primary prevention approaches aligned with the National Code.
Beginning her career in respectful relationships education with young people, Claire has experience implementing evidence-based gender equality and prevention initiatives across education, government, corporate and community sectors, and represented Our Watch as a member of the Expert Reference Group for the development of the National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence 2025.
Rosie Cook (she/her) is the Universities Lead at Our Watch, where she supports Australian universities to embed whole-of-organisation approaches to preventing gender-based violence and advancing gender equality. She has led the coordination of initiatives from The Line in a variety of universities, a world-leading primary prevention campaign for young people. Rosie brings extensive experience designing and delivering consent and respectful relationships education across secondary and tertiary institutions, with a strong focus on engaging young people through accessible, evidence-based prevention messaging. Her background also includes community legal education, building the capacity of frontline workers to support women and gender diverse people experiencing domestic and family violence.