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 to 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 investigators 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.
——————
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
——————
About the Presenters:
Kayse Lee Maass, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering and leads the Operations Research and Social Justice Lab at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on Operations Research methodologies to address human trafficking from a systems perspective to improve prevention efforts, effective interventions, and equitable access to services.
Tariq Samad, PhD holds the W.R. Sweatt Chair at the Technological Leadership Institute, University of Minnesota, where he leads the Management of Technology program. His background is in control systems and his recent work concerns the application of concepts from dynamical systems and control theory to social and societal challenges.
Kelle Barrick, PhD is a Senior Research Criminologist at RTI International. Her current work includes estimating the prevalence of sex and labor trafficking; identifying successful strategies for the identification, investigation, and prosecution of labor trafficking cases; and increasing our understanding of opportunities to disrupt sex trafficking recruitment and network operations.
Thomas Sharkey, PhD is a Professor of Industrial Engineering at Clemson University. Prior to joining Clemson in August 2020, he was a faculty member at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for twelve years. His research interests include network optimization for societal applications including disrupting human trafficking networks and improving supply chain resilience.
Lauren Martin, PhD is associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing. Trained in Anthropology, she conducts qualitative, mixed-methods, collaborative and action research on transactional sex, exploitation and trafficking. In partnership with communities, her scholarship contributes to policy, prevention and intervention, building on strengths and reducing harm.
——————
This material is based upon work supported by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice (Award No. 2020-MU-MU-0040) and the National Science Foundation (#CMMI-2039584 and #CMMI-1838315). The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice or the National Science Foundation.
source
