Human Trafficking Research Lab @Augustana University

I was asked to participate in an Online Seminar Series on Doing Gender and Politics Research in Challenging Times and Environments sponsored by the Standing Group on Gender and Politics at the  the European Consortium for Political Research. The overall goal of seminar series is discuss how feminist research can thrive in increasingly challenging environments offering a space for collective reflection on the practical, methodological, ethical, emotional, and political dimensions of conducting feminist research today. My talk will be on December and the panel is titled "Researching War Zones and Military Institutions: Reflexivity, Care and Safety." The series consist of four thematic sessions, each with three short talks and plenty of time for discussion and sharing of experiences showcasing the latest thinking in the study of environmental politics, delivered by group members and special guests, followed by a moderated discussion. Researching Hostile Environments and Actors:...

After finishing the literature review, adding the data from the interviews and putting the interview information into the methods sections, I sent the recruitment article off to my co-authors. It is nice to get another article sent out (in a way) since there is nothing more I can do without the Telegram data from my co-authors. Since my book is with the copy editor and I am waiting on chapter page proofs I have a little extra time to start some reading for another article based on our NSF study data.  In the interviews with Ukrainian victim service organizations we asked people about help seeking and referrals for social services during war. We believe that between the interview data, Telegram data and hotline data we have enough for a standalone article that can examine how people fleeing war access assistance for human trafficking. I started working on the literature review for this article which is a good first step to knowing what research is out there on how refugees access so...

Over the past few weeks I have been able to attend different events and meet anti-trafficking stakeholders in South Dakota. It is hard to start over again in a new state where people are not familiar with your work but having served on different task forces in Kansas, Georgia, and Illinois, I am confident that I can make some good connections for our research and for guest speakers in my human trafficking class. Last Tuesday I attended Call to Freedom's CommUNITY Breakfast and was able to listen to the Governor Larry Rhoden and Attorney General Marty Jackley speak about trafficking. The breakfast in Sioux Falls brought around 1200 other community members to raise awareness to the work of Call to Freedom a local anti-trafficking NGO in South Dakota. It was mainly a fundraiser but it was interesting to hear stories from a survivor who worked at Call to Freedom and see some of their work.  They had a slide that said that according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2023...