Disrupting the boundaries of the academe : co-creating knowledge and sex work ‘academic-activism’

In this chapter, we reflect on how the criminological agenda can move towards disrupting the boundaries that exist between the academe and sex work activism. We do so as academics who strive to affect social change outside of the academe but we do not attempt to offer a prescriptive ‘how to guide’. Indeed, we are ourselves still grappling with the challenges of, and learning to be better at, ‘academic-activism.’ We begin by shining light on the activist underpinnings of the sex workers’ rights movement, before we outline some of the key scholarship in sex work studies, drawing particular attention to that which seeks to bring about social change. We then explore the utility of participatory action research (PAR) to sex work studies and reflect on how a PAR-inspired approach was used in the Beyond the Gaze research project. Here, we cast a critically-reflexive eye over the unique realities, including the challenges, of integrating sex worker ‘peer researchers’ within the research team. We conclude by considering how the criminological agenda must adapt if we truly want to bring about positive social change for sex workers, as well as how the current system of Higher Education ultimately stymies ‘academic-activist’ approaches to research.