Michelle Lesley Annett
Contract Instructor
- PhD Sociology (Carleton University); MA in Critical Sociology (Brock University); B.A. Hons. In Sociology (St.FX University)
Michelle Lesley Annett is a Contract Instructor in the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation (FIST) at Carleton University. She completed her PhD in Sociology at Carleton University in 2024, where her doctoral research used auto-photography to examine the experiences of sex working mothers in Canada. Drawing on feminist, intersectional, and community-based approaches, her research explores the intersections of sex work, motherhood, stigma, criminalization, and social policy, with particular attention to how legal, social, and institutional systems govern marginalized lives.
Michelle Lesley also serves as a Contract Instructor in the Department of Sociology at St. Francis Xavier University, where she has taught since 2020. Her courses include Sociology of Marriage and Family Life, Addictions, Conceptions of Disability, and Disability and Culture. Across her teaching, she prioritizes critical engagement with social justice, inequality, and the social construction of difference, encouraging students to interrogate dominant assumptions about family, disability, substance use, and marginalization. As a first-generation scholar with disabilities, Michelle Lesley is dedicated to creating accessible, inclusive, and supportive learning environments. Her lived and professional experiences provide her with a deep understanding of the barriers and challenges that many students face in higher education.
Michelle Lesley is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Social Work at the University of Windsor (2025–2027). Her postdoctoral research spans several projects focused on governance, criminalization, and social policy. Current projects examine the impacts of Canada’s Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) on Ontario-based sex workers, as well as the effects of surveillance, criminalization, and visibility-focused policies on people who use drugs and people experiencing homelessness. Across this work, she investigates how law, policy, and institutional practices produce and regulate social exclusion while shaping the everyday lives of marginalized communities.
Research Interests: Gender, sexuality, and sex work; sex working mothers; feminist sociology; criminalization, governance, and surveillance; social policy, homelessness, and harm reduction; substance use and stigma; qualitative, visual, and arts-based methodologies; autophotography; community-based participatory research.
Recent Publications:
De Shalit, A., Michaud, L., & Annett, M.L. (2026). From drug trafficking to human trafficking: Expansion of Carceral and Racialized Governance through Protectionist Rhetoric. Contemporary Drug Problems. https://doi.org/10.1177/00914509261445118
Annett, M.L. (2025). Stigmatized (m)others: Analyzing the navigation of sex work and mothering through an anti-work lens. In I. Šori & M. Hrženjak (Eds.), Sex work and transformations of labour: Navigating digitalisation, precarity and resistance. Routledge.
Annett, M.L. (2025). Review of ‘Sex Work in Popular Culture’ by Lauren Kirshner. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1017/cls.2025.4
Annett, M.L. (2025). Rethinking Anti-Trafficking- Review of ‘Trafficking Harms: Critical Politics, Perspectives, and Experiences’ edited by K. Roots, A. De Shalit, & E. van der Meulen. International Feminist Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2025.2552186
Annett, M.L. & Heynen, R. (2025). Lessons learned: Ontario sex workers experiences of federal and provincial COVID-19 policy. Canadian Public Policy, 51(4), 460–475. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2024-066