Dr Mercilene Machisa is a Specialist Scientist at the Gender and Health Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council and an Honorary Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health. Over the past ten years she has led and collaborated in conducting national and provincial violence against women research prevalence studies in five Southern African countries (Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mauritius, Botswana and South Africa). Her signature studies have been the GBV Indicators studies, which were mixed methods in nature and had national reach in the specified countries. In these studies, she successfully managed research relations with national bureaus of statistics, women’s ministries, police and health departments and local NGOs working on GBV and related matters. She also managed teams of researchers and ensured the collection of quality data, data analysis and reporting. As an epidemiologist by training, she experienced in both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. More recently her research has focused on understanding the complex structural pathways that drive GBV perpetration by men and experience by women. As an honorary lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, she has supported research development of post graduate students undertaking GBV-related research. After co-leading a national project that evaluated the health sector and criminal justice response to sexual violence in South Africa, she is currently the principal investigator for a research project in eight higher education institutions in South Africa, which includes formative research, the development and pre-testing of the Ntombi Vimbela! sexual violence risk reduction intervention.