Our Team

Dr. Millan AbiNader, PhD, MSW

Before entering academia, Dr. Millan AbiNader worked as a community victim services advocate in the fields of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, family violence, and commercial sexual exploitation/trafficking. She delivered sexual violence primary prevention interventions kindergarten through college, facilitated support groups in the community and in carceral settings, and delivered individual advocacy services to incarcerated women. Dr. AbiNader uses multiple methods to understand the social ecology of gender-based violence, with particular attention to how intimate partner violence-related fatalities can help us understand opportunities to improve system responses. Dr. AbiNader also seeks to understand how one’s social and geographic position affects one’s experience of gender-based violence and investigates how the organizational environment affects survivor-client experiences. Through her lab, the Gender-Based Violence Research Group, she works on various projects, collaborating with local anti-violence nonprofits on evaluations and quantitative data analysis of national administrative data.

Past Student Members

  • Emma James, MSW, MSSP (she/her)

    Research Assistant & MSW/MSSP Intern 2024-2025

    Emma conducted qualitative and quantitative research with Dr. AbiNader examining the intersection of intimate partner violence and suicide through multiple lenses, the link between abortion policy and IPV rates, hospital interventions in IPV and suicide, and the effectiveness of an IPV agency speaker’s bureau. She often translated scientific findings for community partners. She also ran GBVRG’s social media awareness campaigns and created this website. 

    Emma works as a hospital-based advocate, improving responses to IPV throughout Philadelphia by utilizing both her social work and social policy degrees to impact the community. 

  • Grace German, MSW (she/her)

    MSW Intern 2023-2024

    Grace supported the GBVRG by conducting systematic literature reviews on gender-based violence, assisting with social media strategy to disseminate the lab’s research to the general public, and collecting data from media sources, investigative reports, and interviews related to homicide cases. She managed data systems using Qualtrics and Excel and supported various research grant activities. She is grateful for the opportunity to have contributed to this work. Grace now serves as a School Social Worker.

  • Rebecca Del Rossi, MSW (she/her)

    MSW Intern 2022-2023

    Rebecca contributed to the GBVRG on the study, The Effects of COVID-19 on Intimate Partner Homicide Incidence and Risk, by collecting and cleaning New Jersey homicide data (2016–2020) from press releases and news archives and abstracting next-of-kin interviews of decedents of IPH. She also helped to conduct a capacity assessment for the Chester Community Coalition and started the GBVRG social media presence! Since then, she has been a Counselor/Advocate for survivors of violence and now works in research coordination. Her next step is a PhD focused on GBV intervention design while looking at how language is used to support norms that either reduce or facilitate violence. 

  • Sarah Pallivalapil-Karerat, LSW (they/them)

    Research Assistant & MSW Intern 2021-2023

    Sarah developed onboarding training for new team members, met with students weekly, and developed group and one-on-one interventions for students navigating vicarious traumatization. They created and delivered a multi-day workshop on vicarious trauma for a community-based victim services agency in rural Botswana. Sarah has carried their work in vicarious traumatization prevention and intimate partner violence education to the Behavioral Health Training and Education Network. Most recently, they organized a one-day free conference for children's therapists as a pilot intervention aiming to intervene in cycles of intergenerational trauma. Sarah carries forward their commitment to change at multiple levels in direct practice at the Therapy Center of Philadelphia, where they provide individual therapy to queer and trans survivors.

  • Louise Tan, MSW, MSSP (she/her)

    MSW/MSSP Intern 2025-2026

    During her time at GBVRG, Louise coded data on domestic violence protection orders in South Africa, identifying patterns in court decisions and interactions with the police. She contributed to studies examining the relationship between suicide and intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide during COVID-19 lockdowns. Louise also ran social media campaigns on digital violence and evidence-based interventions for sexual assault. During her time at Penn, Louise conducted a scoping review of the academic literature on gender-based violence in Malaysia as part of an independent study.

     She will continue working on GBV policy, research, and community interventions in her home country.