This fall POWER’s Research Committee launched the Research Repository, a one-stop research hub for Canadian sex work-related research conducted by both scholars and activists alike. On this page you’ll find bibliographies for pre-2015 research and an overview of key legal cases from the last decade. Most importantly, you will find a detailed index of all Canadian-focused sex work-related research since 2015, the first full year the Conservative-led government’s reforms (Protections of Exploited Persons and Communities Act — Bill C-36) came into effect. The goal of the repository is to provide greater access to the research on sex work in Canada while also tracking the gaps in research as well as areas of research that over / under / mis-represent various parts of our sex working communities. That said, the inclusion of any publication in the repository is not an endorsement of the views or conclusions researchers have made.
Publications are divided into books, journal articles, book chapters, dissertations & theses, and reports, and within these categories each publication is organized chronologically. You can search this index by selecting the “find” function in your browser’s drop down “edit” menu. Once the “find” search function is open simply add a # and search by common terms like #migrantsexworkers, #criminalization, #clients, #health, etc. By adding the hashtag, you assure that you’re searching by the key words identified by the Research Committee and not just by titles. In the future we’ll be working on making the repository and keywords more easily searchable and precise, but this is just a beginning.
The committee will update the repository on a quarterly basis to ensure the materials are up to date. Do you see something we missed? Please let us know by sending full citations and / or pdfs for publications we missed to us at powerresearchrepository@gmail.com.