A Transdisciplinary Approach to Disrupting Sex Trafficking Networks
Kayse Lee Maass, PhD; Lauren Martin, PhD; Thomas Sharkey, PhD; Kelle Barrick, PhD & Tariq Samad, PhD | September 24 | 3:15-4:15 PM
Topic: Conceptual, Research | Knowledge Level: Beginner
Human trafficking is a complex social and human rights issue that is interwoven with many other complex systems. Due to inherent challenges of researching this hidden and dangerous crime, empirical evidence about how human trafficking networks intersect with other types of complex networks and how best to disrupt trafficking is lacking. The field needs to better understand the business-side of human trafficking and how operations function in order to guide decision-making about how best to disrupt trafficking and prevent harm. The necessary knowledge, expertise, and research methods needed to understand this is scattered across academic disciplines and sectors. While collaborative, transdisciplinary research that centers survivors’ perspectives and includes a variety of stakeholders is critical, effective transdisciplinary collaboration is difficult. This presentation will describe how one research team successfully developed a transdisciplinary team of qualitative researchers, operations researchers in engineering fields, systems dynamics experts, survivors, service providers, and human trafficking investigator task force members to provide insight into how sex trafficking networks operate and how they dynamically react to interventions. Novel insights about trafficking operations that have emerged as a result of the multi-disciplinary and cross-sector collaboration will also be discussed. By fostering a practice of cross-disciplinary collaboration, teams can more effectively identify unintended negative consequences of anti-human trafficking policies and decisions, uncover new opportunities for intervention, and understand how an intervention to one part of the human trafficking ecosystem can have ripple effects throughout the network and over time.
Presentation Objectives:
· Introduce the importance of transdisciplinary collaborations
· Describe practices that foster effective transdisciplinary collaborations
· Present new insights about how trafficking networks operate and dynamically adapt to interventions
· Illustrate how transdisciplinary collaboration can be used to more effectively disrupt sex trafficking networks