Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

During my spring break I was asked to give an online talk to a colleague's EUROP 440 Human Trafficking in Europe class about our human trafficking research during Russia's war in Ukraine. I was recovering from surgery and not feeling 100% so I was happy that Amir one of my co-authors on the project could join me and talk about his work on the project. I gave a talk in person at San Diego State University in April 2024 right after I returned from fieldwork in Ukraine and so it was interesting to see how much our research has progressed over the two years. We covered the Telegram data, interview data, and also included data from our hotline paper so it was a lot to cover in a hour but the students asked great questions and were very well informed on human trafficking. It was also great to think about how we have worked to transform the data to research outputs with two journal articles (under review), a chapter in an edited volume on Crime and Justice in Wartime Ukraine , and the...

We hosted a hybrid Central Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force meeting at Millikin. It was the first in-person meeting of the CIHTTF in 1.5 years since August 2024 when there was a hybrid meeting in Champaign and the first well attended meeting since January 2024. We had a small but good group in-person and another 25 people online so it was a great opportunity to network and meet people working on human trafficking in Central Illinois. Illinois State Police and Decatur Police Department both attended as well as our Millikin Campus Police so it was wonderful to see a strong showing of law enforcement at the meeting. It is hard to get the task force running off the ground again but I think our four meetings year rotation with two hybrid meetings to allow for networking is a good model. Subcommittees also meet during the off months so the work of the task force is ongoing and we are hoping for improved participation in the future.

This week I gave a lecture at the University of Kansas to students in POLS 471 The Politics of Human Trafficking. My advisor Hannah Britton started the introduction by saying that the class would not have been possible without my human trafficking work and convincing people that this was an issue worthy of study in political science. It was really humbling to have students read my research (the grad students read my book) and know the work I started there many years ago continues.