Registration and a glance through the conference program book at the familiar names of researchers whose research has informed my own studies both serve to excite and daunt me: as a relative newcomer to the field there is always a degree of apprehension at exposing one’s own work for scrutiny. But the apprehension is unwarranted; the group are friendly, professional and above all curious about what others have to say, which makes for a stimulating and encouraging environment. The size of conference enables this: large enough to bring together a wide spectrum of interests under the rubric of family violence but small enough to ensure networking and connecting.

There are 5 pre-conference workshops offered, ranging from opportunities to learn about using data from a large nationally representative study of child maltreatment (NSCAW), a statistical methods workshop, as well as an intervention model aimed at violent fathers (The Caring Dads program). I attend the former, hoping that we might be able to use the data alongside the UK ALSPAC study data to extend and test an ecological model of the relative contribution of community and society level factors that moderate children’s experiences. It looks promising.

The conference is opened that afternoon by Murray Straus (a ‘retired’ yet outstanding emeritus who has inspired the field and contributed, alongside an admirable array of articles, books and lectures, the widely used and respected Conflict Tactics Scales (1979; revised CTS2, 1996). His ‘partner in crime’, so to speak, is the well-known David Finkehlor from