The Changing Face of The Sex Trade

Amid growing advocacy to decriminalise the sex industry on public health and other grounds, this seminar will bring speakers from different perspectives to explore the potential public health impacts, risks and benefits of different legislative models relating to the sex industry.

This seminar is part of the Global Health Advocacy series, held by the Alma Mata global health network and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Doors will open at 6pm.

Speakers include:

• Dr Kathleen Richardson, leader of the Campaign Against Sex Robots which challenges gender and cultural constructions of females and children as sex objects to be bought and sold as products. The development of sex robots are promoted and modelled on forms of non-reciprocal relationship found in the prostitution trade and her research explores how women and children are still seen as property. Dr Richardson’s ethics of robotics and prostitution is drawn from anti-slavery and she campaigns for the complete abolition of the prostitution trade. She is an advocate of the Nordic Model (or Sex Buyers Law) and a member of the campaign group Nordic Model Now!
• Alex Feis-Bryce, CEO of National Ugly Mugs which campaigns to ending violence against sex workers
• Laura Watson, spokeswoman for the English Collective of Prostitutes, which is a network of women who work or have worked in different areas of the sex industry, campaigning for decriminalisation and safety and economic alternatives.
• Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, a social theorist who researches sexuality and gender and the social construction of the female and male body. Her current research focuses on the prostitution industry and those who work or who have worked in it. She also investigates the competing empirical data from countries where different legal solutions have been implemented in order to mitigate the harms of the prostitution industry and its global reach. She has just returned from a research trip to Germany where prostitution is decriminalised. She advocates the Nordic Model (implemented by France, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Northern Ireland) which decriminalises those who are prostituted but criminalises the buyer and all others involved in the trade, such as pimps. The Nordic Model is currently being deliberated in the UK by the Home Affairs Select Committee as a legal solution to bring current laws on prostitution into line with a liberal democratic society which aspires to gender equality and the reduction of sexual violence'.
• Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, reader in psychology and social policy, assistant dean for equality from Birkbeck University
• Dr Lucy Platt, (Chair), Associate Professor in Public Health Epidemiology in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy

The event is oversubscribed to account for any dropouts and we are operating a waitlist. Entry will operate on a first come first served basis for those who have registered, so please arrive on time in order to secure your seat. Once the room is filled, guests will be directed to the overspill room.

Please let us know if you are no longer able to attend so that we can release your place.