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Faculty Profile

Linda G. Mills JD, MSW, PhD

Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor; Professor of Social Work, Public Policy and Law; Executive Director, Center on Violence and Recovery
Associate Vice Chancellor for Admissions and Financial Support for NYU Abu Dhabi
linda.mills@nyu.edu | (212) 998-2306

bio

Linda G. Mills is Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law. She also serves as executive director of NYU's Center on Violence and Recovery. Mills is NYU's inaugural Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor, vice chancellor for global programs and university life, and associate vice chancellor for admissions and financial support for NYU Abu Dhabi.

Mills's scholarly work challenges the current paradigms of domestic abuse and develops a new theory and practice based on empirical research for rethinking how we respond to violence in intimate relationships. She recently completed a study in Nogales, Arizona, comparing a batterer intervention program to a restorative justice treatment called Circles of Peace. The findings from this randomized controlled trial appear in "The Next Generation of Court-Mandated Domestic Violence Treatment," published in Journal of Experimental Criminology. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Building on the Nogales NSF research, Mills is currently principal investigator on another NSF study in Salt Lake City, Utah. In Utah, Mills is replicating and further testing the effectiveness of traditional batterer intervention programs (BIP) compared to a combined treatment of BIP plus Circles of Peace or BIP plus couples counseling. To complement this research, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) awarded Mills a grant titled "An In-Depth Examination of Batterer Intervention and Alternative Treatment Approaches for Domestic Violence Offenders" to collect and evaluate qualitative data on the experiment currently underway in Salt Lake City.

In 2010, Mills co-directed and co-produced a documentary called Auf Wiedersehen: 'Til We Meet Again, a film that explores the intergenerational transmission of trauma from the Holocaust to 9-11. The film was an official selection at eight film festivals, including the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, and the Copenhagen Jewish Film Festival. In Los Angeles, the film took an Audience Award, Runner Up for Best Documentary, and was an Opening Night Selection and Best Political Film, Honorable Mention, in Philadelphia. Auf Wiedersehen, Til We Meet Again was approved by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture as a Holocaust remembrance tool for high school students. Mills is currently working on a research project in collaboration with Mauthausen Memorial in Austria examining the effectiveness of different modes of delivery of Holocaust and genocide education to young people.

Areas of Expertise

  • Domestic abuse
  • Trauma and recovery
  • Affective lawyering
  • Law and public policy
  • Film advocacy

publications

  • Violent Partners: A Breakthrough Plan for Ending the Cycle of Abuse (Basic Books, 2008)
  • Insult to Injury: Rethinking Our Response to Intimate Abuse (Princeton University, 2003)
  • "The next generation of court-mandated domestic violence treatment: A randomized controlled trial of restorative justice,"; forthcoming in Journal of Experimental Criminology
  • "Do you remember: A letter to my son," published in Traumatology in 2011
  • "A critical new pathway towards change in abusive relationships: The theory of transition framework,"(with Yael Shy) published in Clinical Social Work Journal in 2010.
  • "Circulos de Paz and the Promise of Peace: Restorative Justice Meets Intimate Violence," (with Mary Helen Maley and Yael Shy) published in NYU Review of Law and Social Change in 2009
  • "Shame and intimate abuse: The critical missing link between cause and cure," published in Children and Youth Services Review in 2008
  • "The justice of recovery: How the state can heal the violence of crime," published in Hastings Law Journal in 2006
  • "Fighting for child custody when domestic violence is at issue: A survey of state laws and a call for more research," (with Amy Levin) published in Social Work in 2003
  • "The law of white spaces: Race, culture, and legal education," (with Peter Goodrich) published in Journal of Legal Education in 2001
  • "Killing Her Softly: Intimate Abuse and the Violence of State Intervention," published in Harvard Law Review in 1999