Sex Work and COVID-19 in Global Perspective - Feminist Institute of Social Transformation

Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore et al. explored research findings on the ways that sex workers were impacted by and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, India, Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The panel brought together academics and activists to discuss their findings and consider lessons for the future.

Giving out food in Costa Rica

Panelists

	Ryan Conrad is an Adjunct Research Professor at the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University where he also teaches courses in sexuality studies, human rights, and women’s and gender studies. He has been involved in social movements organized around sexuality, HIV/AIDS, sex work, and poverty for nearly two decades.
	Kate Hardy is an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations at the University of Leeds and a feminist activist. The main focus of her work is low paid and marginalised forms of feminised work. Her research has been widely published academically and disseminated through radio and news media. Kate is committed to developing methodologies which work alongside research participants, in order to undertake socially and politically transformative research.
	Prabha Kotiswaran is Professor of Law and Social Justice at King’s College London. She previously taught at SOAS. She received her undergraduate law degree in India from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and then an LLM and SJD (doctorate) from Harvard Law School. She also practiced law at the New York law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton. Dr Kotiswaran’s main areas of research include criminal law, transnational criminal law, feminist legal studies and sociology of law. She is the author of Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India, published by Princeton University Press (2011) and co-published by Oxford University Press, India (2011).
	Emma McKenna is a Postdoctoral Fellow on a collaborative Future of Canada project in the Department of Sociology at McMaster University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, currently working on a book, Collective Survival: Women’s Anti-Violence Organizing in Toronto, 1973-1993.
	Megan Rivers-Moore is Associate Professor at the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University. Her research focuses on how gender and sexuality operate transnationally, including projects on sex tourism in Costa Rica, sex worker organizing across Latin America, and clandestine abortion. Her book Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility was published in English by the University of Chicago Press and in Spanish by the University of Costa Rica Press.
	Luca Stevenson is a male sex worker and Operations Officer at the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA), a network of more than 100 organisations providing health, legal and social services to sex workers in Europe and Central Asia. ESWA and its members advocate for sex workers’ rights in diverse policy fields such as access to health, justice, digital rights and social inclusion. Luca has worked extensively across Europe with sex workers from various backgrounds including migrant and LGBT sex workers. He is also currently responsible for Mission for ‘Jasmine’, a project of Medecins du Monde France which aims to address and reduce stigma and violence against sex workers and sits on the Board of Directors of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, the Red Umbrella Fund and National Ugly Mugs UK.