Karen Ingala Smith is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Femicide Census, the UK’s most comprehensive source of data on women killed by men and the men who killed them. In 2012 she started Counting Dead Women recording and commemorating women killed by men in the UK.
Karen is currently Chief Executive of nia–an East London charity providing services for women, girls and children who have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence, including prostitution–a position she has held since 2009. Karen has ensured that nia has maintained an undaunted and proudly articulated feminist commitment to woman-centered service provision during an unfavorable economic and political climate.
In addition to her PhD in sociology looking at men’s fatal violence against women from the University of Durham. Karen is a trustee and judge for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize and a Director of Woman’s Place UK. She was awarded the Positive Role Model for Gender at the 2014 National Diversity Awards and authored Defending Women’s Spaces, which looks into the importance of single-sex spaces, particularly for women who have been subjected to men’s violence.