This event has been postponed. Please watch the WIRC newsletter for updates.
Memorial Library
728 State St.
Madison WI 53706
Check-In begins at 9:00 AM
In the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, public awareness of sex trafficking has grown. Yet high-profile cases can obscure the more common, less sensational ways exploitation takes root — and the persistent misconceptions that shape how we talk about it.
One often overlooked reality is how people can be drawn into sex work through economic pressure, grooming, coercion, or social isolation in ways that leave them vulnerable to predatory tactics. Those affected may look like students in our classrooms or young people in our own communities. For educators, this issue is especially pressing. Students facing financial strain, unstable housing, online manipulation, or marginalization may be at heightened risk.
This half-day professional development workshop brings together Wisconsin educators, counselors, health professionals, and interested community members with leading scholars and practitioners who research sex trafficking and advocate for survivors across local, national, and global contexts. Participants will learn to recognize common misconceptions and myths, understand the realities of trafficking in both expected and unexpected contexts, such as school campuses and the upcoming Soccer World Cup games, and gain insight into the vulnerabilities that place people, including students, at risk.
Through discussion and expert presentations on sex trafficking in Wisconsin, at the Southern border, and internationally, workshop attendees will deepen their awareness of the complex social, economic, and psychological forces that create conditions for exploitation, with particular attention to how these dynamics surface within local communities.
Registration is $15 and includes curated digital resources and a delicious catered lunch. Please contact wirc@iris.wisc.edu with questions or requests for accommodations.
Featured Workshop Speakers
Lara Gerassi, Associate Professor, UW-Madison Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work
Lara B. Gerassi’s (she/her) research aims to inform policies and programs that enhance the well-being of people who provide sexual acts or materials for financial compensation. Her work centers the perspectives of people in the sex trades including (but not limited to) sex trafficking survivors, sex workers, and those who do not identify with any one term or label.
Dr. Gerassi’s research consists of two interconnected lines. One line aims to understand the characteristics, contexts, and conditions of people in the sex trades. She uses community-driven study designs to develop, adapt, test, and use methodologically rigorous survey measures to ultimately uncover people’s nuanced experiences of the sex trades. A current project, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, aims to expand this line of work on a national level. A second line aims to identify actionable strategies to strengthen social and healthcare services for people in the sex trades. Collectively, her research aims to improve anti-oppressive policies and inclusive practices for diverse, often minoritized, people who trade sex under diverse circumstances.
Dr. Gerassi’s first-authored book, Sex Trafficking & Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Prevention, Advocacy, and Trauma-Informed Practice (2017), is the first comprehensive text to critically analyze the current research and best practices for social workers working with children, adolescents, and adults who are at risk of sex trafficking. Her publications are available here.
Dr. Gerassi’s pedagogical and mentoring approach is strongly informed by a critical, intersectional lens, which is essential to dismantling systems of oppression and advancing social justice. She teaches multiple courses including Sex Trading and Sex Trafficking and Practice with Individuals, Families, and Groups. Her research and teaching are informed by social work practice experience (LCSW), primarily with survivors of violence.
Sara McKinnon, Professor, UW-Madison Department of Communication Arts
Sara McKinnon is Professor of Rhetoric, Politics & Culture in the Department of Communication Arts, and Faculty Director of Latin American, Caribbean & Iberian Studies. She co-chairs UW-Madison’s Human Rights Program and has affiliations in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chican@ & Latin@ Studies.
Her current research dynamics of human migration in Latin American and examines foreign policy relations and rhetorics in a transnational era, considering as case studies collaborations between the United States, Mexico, and Central American countries since the 1980s to address regional issues such as drug trafficking, corruption, and violence. She also leads a collaborative project to expand the legal information about US immigration and refugee programs and legal counsel available to migrants throughout Latin America as they consider safe options for movement and resettlement. You can find more information about this project at https://migrationamericas.commarts.wisc.edu/
McKinnon has published three books. Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2016), examines the gender discourse that emerged in U.S. immigration and refugee law between the 1980 Refugee Act and 2014. In this project she analyzed a range of gender and sexuality-related political asylum cases against public discourse concerning globalization, women’s rights as human rights, displacement, migration, and sexual violence. The book identifies what gender means in U.S. asylum law and it examines the ways gender and gendered political subjects as serve U.S. national and international interests. Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (Penn State University Press, 2016) is a co-edited collection that explores a range of approaches for using ethnographic and field-based methods in doing rhetorical research, and the co-edited collection, Foreign Policy Rhetorics in the Global Era: Concepts and Case Studies with Michigan State University Press, considers what foreign policy relations and rhetoric mean in a transnational era.
Professor McKinnon regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in communication and human behavior, migration and refugee studies, gender and communication, intercultural communication, and conflict studies, and qualitative and text-based research methods.
Afternoon session
Sex Trafficking, Prevention and Empowerment through YA Literature with
Author and Activist Ruchira Gupta
Ruchira Gupta is an Emmy-winning journalist and founder of Apne Aap, an anti-trafficking organization that supports women and girls in exiting systems of prostitution. Her latest novel, The Freedom Seeker, is a powerful social justice adventure for young readers. It follows her acclaimed debut I Kick and I Fly, which received the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature and the South Asia Book Award.
An internationally recognized activist, Ruchira played a key role in the creation of the UN Trust Fund for Trafficking Survivors and the passage of the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act. She has received honors including the French Ordre National du Mérite, the Clinton Global Citizen Award, and the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction Award. She holds an honorary doctorate from Smith College.
Ruchira has worked with the United Nations across Nepal, Thailand, Kosovo, Iran, and the United States, and she teaches occasionally at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, where she is currently serving as senior fellow. She has co-authored As If Women Matter with Gloria Steinem and edited the anthologies River of Flesh and Renu’s Letters to Birju Babu.
She lives between New York and Forbesganj, where she continues her activism—and paints in her late mother’s garden.