Dr Sarika Dewan, a former PhD student at the Institute of Criminology, recently contributed to international efforts to measure technology-facilitated violence linked to femicide. Her work as a consultant contributes to a global statistical framework developed by UN Women and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Violence against women and its effects have long been central to Dewan’s academic and professional work, leading her to join the UNODC in 2015. More recently, she has supported countries to implement the UNODC’s classification system for femicide, helping strengthen international data and policy responses.
Understanding femicide
The UNODC defines femicide as the intentional killing of a woman due to their gender. They estimate that in 2024 alone, 83,000 women and girls were victims of femicide. More worryingly, around 50,000 of them were killed by intimate partners or family members, with consequences that extend far beyond the victim. There is evidence that femicide can have lasting psychological effects on friends and family, particularly children.
In response, the UNODC and UN Women created a standardised framework for classifying intentional homicide as femicide in 2022. It includes 8 gender-motivational criteria to determine whether a killing can be considered femicide. The aim is to apply the framework worldwide, replacing the multitude of methodologies, definitions and units of analysis currently used in different countries. This will make international comparisons easier, helping inform more effective policy.
In developing the framework, the UNODC also sought to address flaws in previous approaches. One crucial aspect of this is recognising femicide as the end point of a longer continuum of violence against women and girls. Rather than viewing a killing as an isolated incident, this approach recognises how patterns of threat, harassment and coercive control can precede lethal violence. Understanding this process helps identify intervention points before femicide occurs.
The role of technology
When researching a continuum of violence, researchers such as Dewan also highlight the role of digital technology in femicide.
“Technology is becoming an integral part of the modus operandi for certain forms of crime,” she explains, “and one that we can no longer ignore.”
Technology’s influence has often been overlooked, as it typically is not the root cause of death. As a result, its influence is understudied and largely invisible in many countries’ administrative data.
“Yet digital tools are frequently involved,” Dewan adds. “From former partners using them to track and stalk women with fatal consequences, to the filming or live streaming of violence, or the use of online platforms to coordinate or incite attacks against women, particularly those in public life.”
Dewan points out that technology allows stalking and harassment to continue around the clock and across distance, including by perpetrators unknown to the victim, substantially increasing risk.
She specifically advocates for an internationally comparable approach to studying the role of technology in femicide, stressing the need to understand not only whether technology is involved, but how and at what stages it contributes to a killing.
“The use of digital tools or ICTs does not automatically make a homicide gender-motivated,” she explains, “and not all technology-facilitated violence results in lethal outcomes.”
PhD research
Dewan drew inspiration from her Cambridge PhD, which investigated how maternal exposure to violence affected early child development in Uganda’s Northern Region.
After several years of policy-focused work at the UNODC, she took up a PhD to gain direct research experience with women and families affected by violence. She was inspired by Professor Manuel Eisner’s Evidence for Better Lives Study (EBLS), a longitudinal birth-cohort study of families in eight low- and middle-income countries, tracking families from late pregnancy through early childhood. Eisner examined how exposure to violence and other adversities shaped parental well-being and child development. Dewan became interested in conducting similar research into the impact of violence. EBLS was also one of the few violence studies to survey Global South countries, and Dewan sought to add to this.
Uganda’s Northern Region has seen decades of armed conflict. It also has one of the world’s highest rates of intimate partner violence. Dewan interviewed over 450 mothers with children aged 6-23 months, collecting data on their physical and mental health, experience with violence, and the children’s nutrition.
The PhD fieldwork was one of the most challenging parts of Dewan’s doctoral journey, but also the most rewarding. She praises the Institute of Criminology for their support and credits them for developing three main skills: creative problem solving, the ability to connect research with policy and practice, and a strong commitment to scientific rigour, particularly through Professor Eisner’s supervision.
“In all of this, [Eisner] never compromised on quality over quantity,” Dewan recalls. “He always upheld the highest academic rigour on everything we did, at every point in the PhD process.”
Revealing hidden forms of violence
Dewan’s PhD and her current work on technology in femicide share a goal: to produce a better understanding of gender-based violence and its impact. Both cover aspects of gender-based violence that have been overlooked. And both recognise that the impact of violence extends beyond an individual victim.
“My experience in Uganda strengthened my commitment to improving how we measure and understand violence,” she explains, “particularly forms that remain underreported or poorly captured in administrative systems. Technology-facilitated violence sits precisely at that frontier: rapidly evolving, insufficiently measured, and deeply consequential.”
However, Dewan remains hopeful that stronger evidence will support earlier intervention and more effective prevention, helping authorities worldwide in responding to gender-based violence.