Melanie Brazzell’s research and organizing focuses on transformative justice alternatives to prison and policing, particularly for sexual and partner violence. Drawing on their involvement in the feminist anti-violence movement for over fifteen years, Melanie’s participatory research and community engagement are housed within the “What Really Makes Us Safe?” Project. As a PhD student and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara, Melanie studies gender, critical criminology, and social movements. They are currently exploring research as a movement building tool through research collaborations with the Momentum Community, a training institute and movement incubator, and the Ford Foundation’s Realizing Democracy Project. Melanie is also passionate about pedagogy, having worked for eight years in Berlin as a teacher at a democratic co-operative high school for non-traditional adult students that won the Bosch Foundation’s second place prize for best school in Germany in 2016. Melanie received a Bachelor’s from Columbia University and a Master’s from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.