Her research focuses on the laws, policies, and technologies designed to respond to prostitution and human trafficking in the United States, with particular focus on the empirical and sociolegal effects of anti-trafficking interventions on individuals and communities deemed “at risk.” Her book Control and Protect: Collaboration, Carceral Protection, and Domestic Sex Trafficking in the United States (University of California Press) explores the meaning and significance of efforts designed to combat sex trafficking in the United States and is scheduled for release in 2016.
Before coming to Wellesley College, Jennifer was an External Faculty Fellow at Rice University and a member of the Humanities Research Center’s inaugural Seminar, Human Trafficking Past and Present: Crossing Borders, Crossing Disciplines. She was also a postdoctoral researcher at USC’s Annenberg Center on Communication & Leadership Policy, a Visiting Scholar in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, and a Fulbright scholar affiliated with Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In 2011, she received her PhD from UCLA’s Department of Gender Studies.
