Challenging punitive logic and rethinking gender-based and youth justice through restorative practices
IIRP Associate Professor Dr. Fernanda Fonseca Rosenblatt is a globally recognized restorative practitioner, speaker, panelist, and academic researcher whose passion for justice has been central to her professional career. She is an integral support and guide to the IIRP’s thesis students and a respected book review editor for The International Journal of Restorative Justice. With a strong foundation in youth and gender-based justice, Dr. Fonseca Rosenblatt continues to extend her research to fully examine how justice systems respond to harm, whom they support, and whom they leave behind.
This topic is central to her recent Presidential Paper, Gendered violence and restorative justice: Giving survivors voice and choice. Here, Dr. Fonseca Rosenblatt discusses her research interests and how they have evolved, as well as how her students have influenced the way she engages with the field of restorative practices, continually challenging and reinventing its scope of influence and areas of application.
Q: What brought you to the field of restorative practices?
A: I came to restorative practices through my academic research on youth in conflict with the law, many of whom are also victims of structural violence, neglect, and social exclusion. Early on, I became interested in how criminal justice systems respond to young people in ways that often ignore the harms they have experienced themselves. As I engaged with these questions, I found that restorative justice offered a conceptual and empirical framework that took relationships, context, and responsibility seriously without reducing young people to offenders alone. Restorative approaches helped me think more clearly about accountability that is meaningful rather than merely punitive. Over time, this perspective reshaped how I understood harm, justice, and the role of institutions. Restorative justice/practices became not just an object of study, but a lens through which I could critically examine justice systems more broadly.
Interested in discovering how an education in restorative practices can impact your career and community? Apply for our Master of Science degree or one of our graduate certificate programs to experience learning with Dr. Fonseca Rosenblatt and our other renowned faculty.
Q: Why do you think that restorative practices is an important and relevant field of study?
A: I believe restorative practices is especially important because it challenges deeply entrenched punitive logics while remaining attentive to harm, responsibility, and power. As a field of study, restorative practices invites us to ask different questions: not only what rules were broken, but who was harmed, what they need, and how repair might be possible. This is particularly relevant in a moment of widespread social polarization, institutional distrust, and growing awareness of systemic inequalities. Restorative justice also offers an interdisciplinary space where law, social sciences, education, and community knowledge can meaningfully intersect. Importantly, the field is not static — it demands constant critical reflection, empirical grounding, and ethical scrutiny. That ongoing tension between ideals and practice is precisely what makes it such a rich and necessary area of research and teaching.
Q: From where you were to where you are, how have your research interests evolved?
A: My research trajectory began with youth justice, focusing on how young people are processed by criminal justice systems that often fail to recognize their vulnerabilities and lived realities. From there, my work expanded to include victims’ experiences, particularly in cases of gendered violence, where questions of voice, agency, and protection are central. Engaging with these issues led me to examine the limits of conventional justice responses and the promises and risks of restorative approaches in sensitive contexts. More recently, my research has widened to address restorative justice and criminal justice reform more broadly, including through institutional design, policy frameworks, and implementation challenges. Across these shifts, a consistent thread has been my interest in how justice systems respond to harm — and for whom they actually work. This evolution reflects a move from specific populations to systemic questions, while remaining grounded in empirical research.
Q: What have you learned from your students since teaching at the IIRP?
A: Teaching at the IIRP has continually reminded me that restorative practices is lived, tested, and reinvented through practice as much as through theory. My students bring professional experience from diverse fields and regions, which constantly challenges me to rethink assumptions and broaden my analytical lens. Through their work, I have come to see restorative practices-based approaches being meaningfully applied in emerging and unexpected areas — from cybersecurity and the oil and gas industry to faith-based communities, healthcare, education, and organizational settings. Working with students who are pushing relational thinking into new fields has expanded my understanding of what the field can become. I have learned how deeply context matters — culturally, institutionally, and politically — in shaping what the work of restorative practices looks like on the ground. Students also push me to stay attentive to the ethical complexities of restorative practices, especially around power, safety, and unintended consequences. Above all, working with the IIRP students has reinforced my belief that learning in spaces rooted in restorative practices is reciprocal, relational, and ongoing.
