Created in 1992 in the wake of the development of the Alliance of Canadian Research Centres on Violence after the mass shooting at Montréal’s École Polytechnique, The CRI-VIFF, centre for interdisciplinary research on family violence and violence against women), was accredited by Université Laval’s research commission since 2006. The CRI-VIFF remains the largest scientific research centre in this field in French-speaking Canada. The Centre has obtained considerable financing since it received its first federal funding in 1992. It has played a catalyzing role for more than 25 years in Québec’s expertise and applied research regarding both violence in the family and against women.
The Centre recently underwent a major redefinition and restructuring which led to the renewal of the entire program, taking into account the evolution of knowledge in intimate, family, and structural violence. These changes are reflected in the Centre’s new name, the RAIV (applied, interdisciplinary research on intimate, family, and structural violence). Violence against women and children will continue to be studied, but will now be combined with that endured by other groups who are vulnerable to violence because of unequal power relations (gender, race, class, etc.) in our societies.
RAIV has been funded as a strategic cluster since 2020. RAIV takes an original look at the concept of violence, bringing together different disciplinary backgrounds to ensure an integrated and concerted approach to scientific programming. RAIV is the only Quebec center to be a member of the Canadian Alliance of Research Centers on Violence. Community and institutional partners are closely involved in updating our programming. Partnership and applied research is one of the Centre's major strengths, and this is reflected in its decision-making bodies: each of the scientific program areas is co-directed by a university researcher and a partner from the field. The applied and interdisciplinary nature of our research fosters the development of knowledge that contributes to social change, to promote practices that foster social justice and more egalitarian relations between the different groups of social players involved, and to improve public policies.