St. Louis Family Violence Council | St. Louis, MO

Emily Cosgrove is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School with a focus in women, gender, sexuality, and religion. She was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri and earned her bachelor’s degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Washington University in St. Louis with a minor in Religion and Politics. Emily has been doing advocacy work with survivors of sexual and domestic violence for seven years.

As an undergraduate student, Emily worked with a 24/7 crisis service providing peer counseling, resources, and support to survivors of sexual violence in the Washington University community. She later became an educator and trainer with the helpline and revamped the curriculum with increased emphasis on racial justice and queer support. Emily completed a senior research project at the intersection of her interests in advocacy and religion, in which she argued for developing paths toward an integration of religious, spiritual, and secular support for survivors of intimate partner violence.

For the last two years, Emily has worked with the St. Louis Relationship and Sexual Violence Research Development Committee, a subcommittee of the St. Louis Family Violence Council. Earlier this year, she and members of the subcommittee received the Barbara Bennett Award for their previous work developing an educational module on batterer intervention programs as part of a curriculum for new hires and volunteers at several local nonprofits. This summer, Emily will work with the committee to research best practices and develop a specialized training for the city’s 911 dispatchers to help them better identify, understand, and respond to situations of relationship and sexual violence.