RESEARCH
My work connects feminist research with theatrical storytelling to examine how gender and power shape people’s lives. In researching human trafficking, I investigate how institutions and social assumptions influence whose experiences are recognized and whose accounts are believed. Onstage, I explore how performance can confront gender inequality and bring marginalized voices into public view. These pursuits deepen my commitment to combining scholarship with the arts to advance gender justice and turn critical understanding into meaningful social change.
Who Gets Believed? Credibility, Gender, and Trauma in Trafficking Testimony
Who Gets Believed? Credibility, Gender, and Trauma in Trafficking Testimony
Research Period: February 2026 to October 2026
Start Date: February 2026
Completion Date: October 2026
Research Abstract: This research asks how gendered, racialized, and moral assumptions shape the credibility of trafficking survivors’ testimony within legal and institutional settings. It argues that dominant narratives of the “ideal victim,” alongside the conflation of consensual sex work and sex trafficking, create barriers for individuals whose experiences do not fit conventional expectations of victimhood. Drawing on feminist theory, intersectional scholarship, and trauma studies, the research examines how agency, coercion, and vulnerability can coexist. Its methodology combines interdisciplinary literature analysis with a legal case study of L & Ors v The Children’s Commissioner for England & Anor [2013], examining the court judgment alongside relevant UK legislation and victim-protection frameworks. The research demonstrates the need for a trauma-informed, rights-based approach to credibility assessment that recognizes survivors’ complex experiences without reducing them to predetermined categories of victimhood or agency.
Conducted under the guidance of Professor Carly Thomsen from Rice University
Research Keywords: Gender, Trauma, Testimony, and the relationship between Vulnerability, Agency, and institutional responses to marginalized communities
Who Gets Believed? Credibility, Gender, and Trauma in Trafficking Testimony
Who Gets Believed? Credibility, Gender, and Trauma in Trafficking Testimony
Research Period: February 2026 to October 2026
Start Date: February 2026
Completion Date: October 2026
Research Abstract: This research asks how gendered, racialized, and moral assumptions shape the credibility of trafficking survivors’ testimony within legal and institutional settings. It argues that dominant narratives of the “ideal victim,” alongside the conflation of consensual sex work and sex trafficking, create barriers for individuals whose experiences do not fit conventional expectations of victimhood. Drawing on feminist theory, intersectional scholarship, and trauma studies, the research examines how agency, coercion, and vulnerability can coexist. Its methodology combines interdisciplinary literature analysis with a legal case study of L & Ors v The Children’s Commissioner for England & Anor [2013], examining the court judgment alongside relevant UK legislation and victim-protection frameworks. The research demonstrates the need for a trauma-informed, rights-based approach to credibility assessment that recognizes survivors’ complex experiences without reducing them to predetermined categories of victimhood or agency.
Conducted under the guidance of Professor Carly Thomsen from Rice University
Research Keywords: Gender, Trauma, Testimony, and the relationship between Vulnerability, Agency, and institutional responses to marginalized communities
