Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy & Politics

About Jane PitcherMaggie O'NeillTeela Sanders

Teela Sanders is Professor of Criminology at the University of Leicester specializing in the cross-sections between gender crime and justice. She has researched areas relating to the sex industry for 15 years producing eight books and many articles. Her current projects look at digital technologies and the sex industry (www.beyond-the-gaze.com) with a strong impact agenda around netreach and safety guidance for sex workers. She is a strong supporter of Participatory Action Research methods which underpin her research endeavours working alongside the sex work community to ensure evidence-based policy speaks to the rights agenda. Other work focuses on homicide and mental health with sex workers. The National Ugly Mugs are collaborative partners with her research activities enabling impact into grassroots activities. Maggie ONeill is Chair in Sociology/Criminology in the Department of Sociology University of York and has conducted participatory and feminist work on sex work with sex workers practitioners communities artists and other researchers since 1989. Her inter-disciplinary research career has developed along a threefold path: the development of cultural criminological and feminist theory; the development of innovative methodologies for doing social research including visual biographical and performative (walking) methodologies (ethno-mimesis); and the development of praxis (policy) interventions in practice and policy. She co-founded and co-chairs the Sex Work Research hub with Rosie Campbell and Teela Sanders. She is a board member of the North East Sex Work Forum co-founded the Crime Research Network and co-chairs the Migration Research Network at the University of York. Maggie has a long history of conducting participatory biographical and arts-based research working in collaboration with artists communities and criminal justice agencies on asylum and migration. Jane Pitcher completed an ESRC-funded PhD in Social Sciences at Loughborough University which explored the working experiences of sex workers in different indoor settings in Great Britain drawing on in-depth inter­views with adult female male and transgender sex workers. She has more than 20 years research and evaluation expertise in voluntary academic and public sector organizations including recently working on a study of internet-based sex work Beyond the Gaze with co-researchers at the universities of Leicester and Strathclyde and is co-author of Internet Sex Work: Beyond the Gaze (Palgrave 2017). She has undertaken research and published on sex work and services to sex workers criminal justice and community safety and labour market disad­vantage as well as teaching a postgraduate module on Feminism and Sex Industries. Her research interests include intimate labour labour market struc­tures and gender and policy responses to sex work.