Millan AbiNader, LMSW, PhD

Dr. Millan AbiNader is a mixed-methods researcher who seeks to understand the social ecology of gender-based violence, with particular attention to intimate partner violence (IPV)-related fatalities. Dr. AbiNader also seeks to understand how one’s social and geographic position, like race or rurality, affects one’s experience of gender-based violence and investigates how organizational environment, like vicarious traumatization prevention policies, affects survivor-client experiences. Before entering academia, Dr. 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 primary prevention interventions kindergarten through college, facilitated support groups in the community and in carceral settings, and delivered advocacy services to incarcerated women.

Dr. AbiNader earned her MSSW from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD in Social Work from Boston University where she completed an award-winning dissertation examining rural intimate partner homicide. Dr. AbiNader was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Social Work’s Office of Gender Based Violence under the mentorship of Dr. Jill Messing where she studied intimate partner homicide and risk assessment. Dr. AbiNader is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, a Senior Scholar at the Penn Injury Science Center, a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, and a 2023 Deans’ Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. AbiNader has won two awards while at Penn for her work on IPV-related fatality: the NVDRS New Investigator Award (APHA, CDC) for her investigation of suicide and coercive control in the IPV context and the Catherine Barber Award (APHA, the Joyce Foundation) for disseminating methods for investigating IPV-related fatalities in national datasets.

Dr. AbiNader’s current research projects investigate intimate partner violence-related homicide and suicide, vicarious trauma, and gender-based violence intervention across contexts. She also works closely with community agencies to support program evaluations and needs assessments. Dr. AbiNader integrates her practice experience as a victim advocate and macro social worker with her research, aiming to lead studies that support survivor and perpetrator healing and change.