Human Trafficking Research Lab @Augustana University

Big news, the Human Trafficking Research Lab has moved to Augustana University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota! We are working to get our research space set up here and I am hoping to be able to hire a student research assistant so that we can continue our localized human trafficking research in South Dakota. I also have lofty goals of learning more about possible changes to the law to make it more victim-centered and hope to join a human trafficking task force in the state.  Trying to get some of the funds transferred to Augustana has been a four month long challenge but I am hoping it will work out (keep your fingers crossed for us). Millikin said I could not employ my previous research assistant past May, but thankfully I am able to pay her myself over the summer our of my own pocket so we can continue our narrative policy framework project. I am invested in continuing this research and supporting my previous research assistant to hopefully present at a conference in the future. It...

In June we received another round of revisions on our adjudication research so I have been diving into those this past week to try to get them the article revised and resubmitted before the semester starts. We had a new reviewer who wants us to tackle and clarify some new things and add a methodological appendix which is one of my favorite things! They also wanted us to be more consistent in our terminology and clarify differences with regional characteristics and factors. So I will be doing my best to add all of those things and not push the manuscript too far over the page limit. Hoping for an article acceptance soon! 

Finally, getting back to some of the research from our NSF sponsored research project on human trafficking during the war in Ukraine. It has been a hectic summer and so many decisions came in May and early June when I was traveling with students and did not have time to work on them. Then in July we moved 600 miles across the country so I am trying to get caught up in August before the academic year starts at my new institution. This week I had the opportunity to resubmit our human trafficking hotline article. This article utilizes unique data from 88,939 calls received by the National Toll-Free Migrant and Anti-Trafficking Hotline 527 from September 2021 to September 2023-before and after the full-scale invasion. We explored who accesses the human trafficking hotline during war and how does insecurity for potential migrants manifest during war as they navigate displacement. We determined that hotline data can be a precursor to the human trafficking patterns that follow because it can ...

When I moved to Central Illinois in 2016 one of the biggest worries I had about moving there was the lack of human trafficking community. In Atlanta, I left one of the longest serving task forces in the United States with an excellent infrastructure and organization sponsored by the Governor's Office in Georgia. It took me a few years to find those connections in Central Illinois and many of them had to be created from scratch.  In 2017, I heard about the establishment of a new task force in Central Illinois by State' Attorney Greg Harris at the Department of Justice Office in Springfield and so I wrote asking to be able to contribute. Advocating and using my research with practical applications was something I missed since moving to Illinois and I was really thankful to be on the ground floor with this newly formed task force! The picture above was my first meeting at the DOJ Office in Springfield and this meeting started eight years of collaboration and advocacy in the region...

  Today, I attended the Protection Cluster's Anti-Trafficking Task Force (ATTF) in Ukraine also known as the Оперативної групи з протидії торгівлі людьми Кластеру з питань захисту (ОГПТЛ) in Ukrianian. This is an online meeting that due to funding cuts with USAID and the war has not met since November 2024. So even though I am in the middle of moving I made it a priority to attend and learn about the recent updates to anti-trafficking work in Ukraine. We learned about developments with the State Programme on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings until 2030. It was interesting to hear how the program is aimed at European Union membership and integration commitments. There are special mentions in the program for recruitment in online spaces and the use of online networks by traffickers which was particularly interesting for our research.  We also had a presentation on the different human trafficking cases assisted by the IOM Mission in Ukraine and its Partners in 2024–2025. It w...

We had a virtual Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force meeting today where Cassidy took the minutes. It was nice to see people who I met at the Illinois Statewide Human Trafficking Conference last week in Peoria and talk about recent trends that service providers are seeing. We also discussed the leadership transition as I am moving to South Dakota and the Center for Prevention of Abuse is going to help the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services Office in Decatur run the task force in the future. I am sad to be moving onto other locations but it was a nice send off after eight years of serving on the CIHTTF and running the meetings for almost three years of that time. It definitely felt like I was one of the longest serving members but I know I am leaving the task force in good hands.