Ethical and Methodological Issues in Sex Work Research | LSE Research Showcase 2023
Presented by Dr Sharmila Parmanand, watch the video here.
There is a history of collaboration but also uneasy tension between sex work researchers and sex worker-led organisations. This is understandable because academic research is inevitably an extractive process, especially toward stigmatised, marginalised, and criminalised groups. We will not be able to fully remove ourselves from extractive and colonial structures of research, but there are steps we can take to minimise these harms.
Drawing on her ethnographic research with sex worker organisations in the Philippines and Singapore, Dr Sharmila Parmanand traces her methodological journey, with a focus on the ethical considerations involved in sex work research and her reflections on how to minimise hierarchies in knowledge production; develop creative research methods that do not merely yield "academic data" but also provide a space for validation, politicisation, and psychic relief for participants; recognise the intellectual contributions of actors outside academia; and build more reciprocal research relationships.
(May 2023)
Transnational 'Anti-Gender' Movements and Resistance: Narratives and Interventions - AHRC Network Grant awarded to Clare Hemmings and Sumi Madhok.
This project will build a transnational solidarity network of scholars, activists and policy makers to counter the anti-gender mobilisations that are increasingly contracting the space for feminist scholarship and political activism across the globe. The new research network will map the narrative building blocks – the political grammars, conceptual vocabularies, rhetoric, figures, and temporalities – of both ‘anti-gender ideology’ interventions and the political struggles and solidarities engendered in resistance
(September 2022)
Troubling Anti-gender Attacks: Transnational Activist & Academic Perspectives –Open Society University Network (OSUN) Grant (Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice Program) awarded to Aiko Holvikivi, Billy Holzberg (KCL), Tomás Ojeda and Haley McEwen (Wits University).
This collaborative initiative builds on a broader book project entitled Transnationalising Anti-gender Politics, which will be published as part of Palgrave’s ‘Thinking Gender in Transnational Times’ series (under contract). The OSUN grant supported the organisation of a virtual roundtable discussion with leading scholars and activists in the field, which took place on May 25. The key analyses of the event will be disseminated through two main outputs: 1) a brief commentary report and 2) a chapter to be included in the edited volume. For a longer description of the project, click here (under 'Research').
(August 2022)
COVID-19: Reflections on the Pandemic
Writing from our faculty and PhD students about the politics of COVID-19.
(June 2020)
Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer
This four-year (2018-2022) research project is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The investigators are Lizzie Thynne (PI, University of Sussex), Yvonne Tasker (CI, University of Leeds) and Sadie Wearing (CI LSE).
Jill Craigie (1911 – 1999) was one of Britain’s earliest women documentary makers whose films stand out because of their overtly feminist and socialist politics, and their attempt to combine activism and entertainment. Located within women’s film history, the project aims to explore Craigie as a significant force in British cinema history whose films warrant closer attention.
Project outputs include:
Book (forthcoming): Jill Craigie: Film and feminism in Postwar Britain (co-authored by Sadie Wearing & Yvonne Tasker)
Award-winning film: Indpendent Miss Craigie (directed by Lizzie Thynne)