Centre for Sex Work Research and Policy UK

UKNSWP 2010 Conference: call for Workshop Leaders and Conference Presenters

2010-05-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

"Preparations are underway once again for the UK Network of Sex Work Projects’ annual conference. Although we have yet to confirm the venue, we can confirm that this year our conference will be held on the 19th and 20th October in Manchester. Details will be released to members as soon as they are available.

We are aiming to hold the UKNSWP AGM and workshops on the first day of the conference with presentations from members and invited guests the following day.

This year the conference will provide a forum for members to engage in critical discussion regarding how we can best promote and secure social inclusion for sex workers.

We have a working title:

Sex Workers and Social Inclusion: Promoting Social Inclusion for Sex Workers within the Community, Legal Framework & Economic Climate.

Workshops and presentations will focus on the following issues:

Workshop (A): MIGRANT WORKERS AND ECONOMIC CLIMATE

This workshop focuses specifically on migrant sex workers who are working in the UK within the current socio-economic climate. The workshop will provide a forum for discussion on how we can best ensure that migrant workers have adequate support and access to services. We would welcome papers from projects which can share experience and good practice.

Workshop (B) SAFETY OF SEX WORKERS

The safety of sex workers is fundamental to their social inclusion. This workshop aims to discuss the ways in which projects can best ensure the safety of all sex workers in partnership with the police and other agencies. We welcome papers from projects to share their ideas and experiences and successes in this respect.

Workshop (C): INNOVATIVE OUTREACH

This workshop focuses on developing outreach skills and knowledge. We are particularly interested in applications from member projects which can share their experience with regard to ‘netreach’.

Workshop (D) PROMOTING SOCIAL INCLUSION FOR SEX WORKERS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

This workshop has two aims. First, to discuss the ways in which criminal justice agencies such as Local Police Authorities can work towards ensuring social inclusion for sex workers. Secondly, to share ideas/good practice on how projects can bring about social inclusion for sex workers within the community. It is with regard to this latter aim that we invite members to present on their innovative community project work (for example arts initiatives) that promotes social inclusion of sex workers.

If you are interested in delivering a workshop presentation we would need an abstract submitted by 4th June. Please email your abstract to Tracey Sagar at her email: T.Sagar@swansea.ac.uk

Applications should include:

1) The name of the member(s) or project making the application

2) The title of the workshop/presentation

3) The workshop which you wish to take part in: Workshop (A), (B), (C) or (D)

4) A content summary/abstract of up to 300 words.

The UKNSWP is not in a position to provide a fee for this but, workshop leaders and presenters will be given a free place at the conference"

Go to UKNSWP website

Sex and the Law - Criminalisation? Protection? Rights? 23rd September 2010, Sheffield

2010-05-26T04:31:00.000-07:00

A one-day conference exploring issues surrounding sex and the law, providing information and a forum for debate.

The day will be chaired by Professor Roger Ingham from the Centre for Sexual Health Research, University of Southampton and keynote speakers include Peter Tatchell, prominent human rights campaigner and Yusef Azad from the National Aids Trust.

Workshops will include:
* Trafficking/Sex Workers/International Law
* Pornography issues
* SRE
* Female Genital Mutilation
* Refugees and Asylum Seekers
* Fertilisation/Embryology and implications for lesbians
* Street sex workers/prostitution and the law

Cost: £150 (Early Bird - book by 28.05.10) or £190

Contact: Ashley Beaumont-Thomas, Training Administrator,
Centre for HIV & Sexual Health, Tel: 0114 226 1902
Email: admin@chiv.nhs.uk
Go to webpage

UK NSWP Policy Group Meeting 19th February 2010

2010-01-25T01:33:00.000-08:00

The next meeting of the UKNSWP Policy Group will be held on Friday 19th February 2010. The meeting will be hosted Manchester Action on Street Health MASH in Manchester. Coffee will be at 10.30, meeting commencement at 11 and end at 3.30. Watch the UKNSWP website and further member alerts for the venue details.

The Policy Group is open to all UKNSWP members. If you will be attending or wish to send apologies please email Rosie at rosiecamp1@aol.com. Lunch will be provided so we do need to know if you are attending for catering purposes. If you have any items for the agenda please email them to Rosie by Wednesday 10th February.

Minutes from previous meetings, including the last meeting in Cardiff December 2009 can be found on the Policy Group Forum area of the UKNSWP website.

Writings of Intimacy in the 20th & 21st Centuries, 10th – 12th September 2010

2010-01-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

Held at the Department of English and Drama, Loughborough University, UK

Keynote speakers: Adam Phillips (UK), Leo Bersani (USA), Lauren Berlant (tbc) (USA).
A special performance of intimate poetry is also scheduled, including readings from Andrea Brady and Jonty Tiplady.

This conference seeks to explore the significance of intimacy in and for the writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our most intimate relationships are those which can powerfully define and nurture us, hurt and grieve us. Yet intimacy is not necessarily confined to those we know well: it is possible between strangers and is not always conditional upon a personal relationship existing between the subjects involved. There are, indeed, intimate ways of behaving towards others which involve acts of violence, such as torture and rape.

Over the course of the twentieth century there was a marked rise in the explicitness with which intimacy was represented in literary texts. In part this was linked to challenges to, and the subsequent relaxation of, censorship laws. Literary writers have used intimacy in various ways to disrupt genre boundaries, to question the definitions of taste, and to experiment with literary forms and narrative voices, as well as to present their readers with a more visceral engagement with the body, its acts, and our desires. There are intimate forms of writing, such as love poetry, autobiography, eulogies and personal letters, which are an essential part of our literary heritage. Critical theory, too, has become increasingly interested in defining and discussing intimacy and its impact upon our lives, and this engagement is much indebted to the discourses of psychoanalysis.

Writings of Intimacy wishes to investigate the way in which intimacy has been written: its representation and theorisation. Topics for consideration may include, although do not have to be defined by:

Representations of intimacy, e.g. sex, love, death, violence, nursing
Intimate roles, e.g. lover, mother, analyst, carer
Intimate forms of writing, e.g. life writing, love poetry, works of mourning
The poetics of intimacy
The politics of intimacy
Intimate scenes and experimentalism
The intimate and the impersonal
Narrative voice and intimacy
Philosophies of intimacy
Psychoanalysis and intimacy
Intimacy and the avant-garde
Self-intimacy
The unconscious and dreams and intimacy
Intimacy and censorship
Intimacy and knowledge
Intimacy and space/location

Individual abstracts and proposals for panels are welcomed. Abstracts of 300 words should be sent to Jennifer Cooke at writingsofintimacy@lboro.ac.uk by 31st March 2010

Go to website here

Desiring Just Economies / Just Economies of Desire Location: Call for Papers Deadline: 2010-01-20

2010-01-21T01:06:00.000-08:00

International Conference, 24-26 June 2010, at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Confirmed Speakers: Lisa Duggan, Kevin Floyd, Josephine Ho, Ratna Kapur, Desiree Lewis, Anne McClintock, Donald Morton

The conference seeks to explore how desire not only sustains current economies, but also carries the potential for inciting new forms of understanding and doing economy. We propose to focus on the notion of desire as a tool to explore economy’s sexual dimension as much as the economic dimension of sexuality. Drawing on Queer Theory we understand desire as historically structured by heterosexual norms, while simultaneously functioning as a structuring force itself – thus inscribing reproductive heteronormativity to subjectivity and society. Presuming that desire can be envisioned beyond heteronormative restrictions and that this bears on the idea of justice, the question arises whether the pursuit of economic and sexual justice can be made to coincide when economy is queered by desire. Rather than a realisable universal norm, the term justice is employed as a contestable term, offering possibility for debate and political practice. The conference's twin interest lies in unpacking how sexuality is implicit in economic processes and in unfolding how economy is linked to sexuality. How do current global economic processes (including production, reproduction, consumption, circulation, speculation) constitute specific sexual identities and practices that collaborate in relations of exploitation, domination, and subjectivation? Conversely, how do ways of organizing sexuality influence economic processes?

In addition to exploring the reciprocal relation between sexuality and economy, the conference inquires into how a queer reconceptualization of desire may emerge as a destabilizing and transformative force in economic relations. One of the aims of the conference is to fashion space for imagining “other” economies or imagining economy “otherwise”, as well as for the deployment of the concept of desire in ways that allow for a reworking of social relationships and economic practices. The presumption here is that global capitalism is not a monolith; rather, there exist diverse capitalisms and diverse economies. For instance, economic practices in the fields of migration and diasporas, subcultural economies, gift and barter economies and cooperative economies do not all conform to the capitalist logics.

“Desiring Just Economies / Just Economies of Desire” is an international, transdisciplinary conference that welcomes a wide range of presentations, from academic papers to experimental writing, lecture performances, and visual presentations. We invite scholars, activists and artists inspired by queer and postcolonial theory to submit abstracts that relate to the questions raised in the full CFP available at: http://www.desiring-just-economies.de

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 January 2010

Organizers: Nikita Dhawan (Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies [FRCPS], Excellence Cluster “Formation of Normative Orders” Goethe-University Frankfurt), Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory, Berlin/Hamburg), Christoph Holzhey (ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry), Volker Woltersdorff (SFB “Cultures of the Performative”, FU Berlin)

Christoph Holzhey
ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Christinenstr. 18/19
10119 Berlin
Germany
Email: cfp@desiring-just-economies.de
Visit the website here

Capita’s 5th National Targeting Prostitution Conference, Friday 27th November 2009, Central London

2009-11-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Aims and objectives
Capita’s 5th National Prostitution Conference brings together expert speakers from forward thinking organisations working together to address the complex range of issues surrounding prostitution in the UK.

It is an important time for local authorities, the police, health and outreach services and charities involved in the prostitution agenda. The new laws set out in the 2009 Policing and Crime Bill will radically impact upon multi-agency approaches to enforcement, engagement and support.

During this crucial period of change it is imperative stakeholders come together to share their views, identify successful strategies and share proven good practice. Only then will an effective and unified partnership approach be found to overcome key challenges.
This timely event will address core issues, including:

•Ways to transform the latest policy into effective practice within the framework of the new laws
•How to provide care, support and exits out of prostitution for sexually exploited children, young people and trafficked women
•Identifying local trends in prostitution so as to develop multi-agency responses to actively target related crime
•Approaches to ensuring ‘on’ and ‘off’ street sex workers receive sexual health and drug related support services
Take the opportunity to voice your opinion on the current legal and strategic picture and network with the wide range of stakeholders involved in tackling the central concerns resulting from prostitution in the UK.

Benefits of attending
•Gain an update on ACPO strategies for tackling prostitution and drug use
•Consider how the new laws set out in the Policing and Crime Bill 2009 will impact on prostitution
•Explore ways to enable children and young people to exit and recover from sexual exploitation and prostitution
•Hear from the Metropolitan Police on how the police, local authorities, PCTs and outreach services can target prostitution through effective partnership working
•Discover methods for providing a wide range of sexual health and drug support services to ‘on’ and ‘off’ street sex workers
•Take away strategy for providing accommodation, support and routes out for trafficked sex workers
•Learn successful practice for meeting the support needs of former sex workers in prisons

Speakers include:
Chair: Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon
Reader in Psychology and Social Policy, School of Psychology
Birkbeck College, University of London

Dr Tim Brain
Chief Constable
Gloucestershire Police and
ACPO Lead on Prostitution and Vice

Sian Kilcommons
Vice Chair
UKNSWP

Michelle Farley
Service Manager
SHOC Haringey

Jon Birch
Inspector, CO14 Clubs and Vice Unit
Metropolitan Police Service

Gunilla Ekberg
Policy and Legislative Advisor on Prostitution and Trafficking
Eaves

Julia Lowndes
Lead Policy Officer for Prostitution and

Sue Webb
Partnership Analyst
Safer Birmingham Partnership

More details can be found
here.

NATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SEX WORKER RIGHTS IN AUSTRALIA

2009-11-04T04:05:00.000-08:00

Wed 18 November 2009
Old Parliament House, Canberra
Members Dining Room 3
1.45pm - 4.30pm

FAILED SYSTEMS OF LEGISLATION
The Swedish Model and Zoning / Red Light Districts
Rachel Wotton

Criminalisation of HIV
Kane Mathews

Street Based Sex Work and Criminalisation
Christian Vega

Trafficking and Visa Reform in Australia
Elena Jeffreys

MODELS OF SUCCESSFUL LAW REFORM
Decriminalisation in NSW & New Zealand, Anti-Discrimination
Saul Isbister

Funding for Sex Workers to Participate in Law Reform Advocacy & Advice
to Government
Janelle Fawkes

Decriminalisation Protections
Alina Thomas

RSVP NECESSARY

Further information can be found here.

"Working Sex: Power, Practice, and Politics", Desiree Alliance conference, Las Vegas, 25-30 July 2010

2009-11-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

The Desiree Alliance is pleased to announce their upcoming National Sex Worker Conference:

"Working Sex: Power, Practice, and Politics"

To be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 25th to 30th, 2010.

Further details can be found at the Desiree Alliance website.

UKNSWP Policy Group: Next Meeting 4th Dec 2009

2009-11-04T03:49:00.000-08:00

The next meeting of the UK Network of Sex Work Projects Policy Group is Friday 4th December 2009. The meeting will be hosted by Terence Higgins Trust Cymru, Cardiff. Canton House, 435-451 Cowbridge Road East, Canton Cardiff CF5 1JH

The Policy Group is open to all UKNSWP members. Further details can be found on the UKNSWP website.

CALL FOR PAPERS: “Demystifying Sex Work and Sex Workers”

2009-11-04T03:44:00.000-08:00

Special Issue for Wagadu, Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies

Edited by Susan Dewey, Ph.D.

University Studies, DePauw University

Sex workers throughout the world share a uniquely maligned mystique that simultaneously positions them as sexually desirable and socially repulsive. In order to better understand how these processes function cross-culturally, this special issue of Wagadu invites papers focusing upon the everyday lives of sex workers, broadly defined as those who exchange sexual services for something of value. While recent years have witnessed a dramatic outpouring of feminist scholarship on sex work (Bernstein 2007; Day 2007; Doezema 2001; Kempadoo 2005, Kuo 2002; Munro and Della Giusta 2008), much of this literature unintentionally reinforces the social stigmatization of sex workers by depicting them solely through their income-earning activities. This burgeoning research has convincingly demonstrated that sex work is embedded in a complex social matrix that often centres upon sex workers’ perceptions of their individual choices and responsibilities (Agustín 2007; Bott 2006; Dewey 2008; Weitzer 2009). A limited amount of academic work has presented sex workers as complete social beings by depicting the full picture of their daily lives and economic struggles with appropriate complexity (Barton 2002; Brennan 2004; Kelly 2008; Raphael 2004; Wesely 2003, 2002; Zheng 2009). Accordingly, this special issue will fill a significant gap in the literature by examining how individual biography intersects with structural position to condition certain categories of individuals to believe that their self-esteem, material worth and possibilities for life improvement are invested in their bodies and sexual labour. Such beliefs inevitably combine with sex workers’ knowledge of their marginal, conflicted social status to inform many of their decision-making strategies. Papers in this issue will thus illustrate the processes by which sex workers are able to see themselves as agents and entrepreneurs despite pervasive social messages to the contrary.
They particularly welcome papers focusing on the everyday life experiences of sex workers that address the following topics, although others are welcome for consideration:

•occupation-specific perceptions of risk, fair exchange and emotional labour, with particular regard to biological family and other members of social and financial support networks;
•life history analyses that explore both the long and short-term impacts of what sex workers often describe as a short-term survival strategy;
•perceptions of institutional processes that translate social stigma into public policy, particularly by placing unmarried, low income mothers at a serious disadvantage in the post-welfare reform era;
•critical analyses of the relationships between the feminization of poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and sex work, including assumptions made about such connections by policymakers and popular culture
•relationships with and perceptions of social service providers, including special issues for migrant and/or undocumented sex workers;
•personal narratives describing sex workers’ negotiation of biological family relationships and other social networks, including others’ awareness of sex work as a source of income and support;
•experiences in previous non-sex work employment and perceptions of sustainable options for other forms of non-sex work, with particular regard to sex workers’ long term aspirations;
•the complex intersections of social stigma with individual agency as sex workers seek to define themselves on terms outside the narrow purview of their labour;
•individual sex workers’ experiences with law enforcement officials, with particular attention to perceptions of the impact of anti-trafficking initiatives on sex workers’ everyday lives.
Please send abstracts (300 words max.) by January 15, 2010 and, if accepted for publication, complete essays by April 15, 2010. All submissions should be submitted electronically to wagadu.org

For other inquiries, please email Dr. Dewey at susandewey@depauw.edu

‘Rights not Rescue’ Mama Cash meeting in Amsterdam, November 10

2009-11-04T02:48:00.000-08:00

Recent laws and policies put in place to protect sex workers have in fact resulted in widespread abuses of their rights. Programmes aimed at sex workers often attempt to 'rescue' them, without addressing their human rights. Despite enormous challenges, sex workers are calling for legal reform and programmes to end violence and discrimination. They advocate for safer working conditions and access to health care. They want rights not rescue. On November 10 Mama Cash will give the floor to sex workers and activists from around the world for a discussion about sex work and human rights.

The panel discussion features Ruth Morgan Thomas (Scottish Prostitutes Education Project), Pye Jakobsson (Rose Alliance, Sweden), Marianne Jonker (Soa Aids Netherlands) and Macklean Kyomya (WONETHA, Uganda).

Moderator: Marjan Sax.

Mama Cash is organising the event in cooperation with the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP).

Date: Tuesday, November 10 2009

Location: De Balie, Amsterdam Grote Zaal

Time: 20.00 - 21.30

Language: English

Further information: http://www.mamacash.org