The Board

	Professor Maggie O’Neill is Head and Professor in Sociology at University College, Cork. Before taking up a chair at University College, Cork, she was Chair in Sociology & Criminology in the Department of Sociology at the University of York, and Professor in Criminology at the University of Durham and Principal of Ustinov College. She describes herself as an inter-disciplinary scholar. Her PhD in Sociology explored the transformative possibilities for conducting feminist participatory action research with sex workers and was awarded in 1996. The majority of the empirical research she has conducted uses participatory action research, ethnographic and biographical methods and participatory arts. She has a long history of working with artists and community groups to conduct arts based research-working together to create change; and social justice is at the core of her work.
	Dr Gillian Wylie is assistant professor of International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin. Her research work centres on the issue of human trafficking with a particular interest in the politics of trafficking discourses. Her recent published work includes The International Politics of Human Trafficking (Palgrave 2016) and Feminism, Prostitution and the State: The Politics of Neo-Abolitionism (edited with Eilis Ward, Routledge 2017). Her current work focuses on the nexus between trafficking discourses and the securitization of migration by nation-states.
	Dr Kathryn McGarry (Chair of ISWRN) is a lecturer in social policy in the Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University. Her research interests include gender and risk, prostitution policy and discourse analysis. She is participated as an expert academic witness in the recent Irish government consultation on proposed change to prostitution legislation in Ireland, calling for a social justice response to prostitution. She is currently chair of the board of the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland.
	Dr Leigh-Ann Sweeney is a Lecturer and health service researcher at IT Sligo . Her research to date has focused on qualitative, service-user led research, with a specific interest in narrative inquiry, socio-environmental theories and gender. Dr Sweeney’s PhD research topic, The psychosocial experiences of women involved in prostitution: An exploratory study, provides empirical evidence on the health needs and experiences of women in the sex industry.
	Dr Paul Ryan is a lecturer in sociology at Maynooth University. His research focuses on questions of sexuality, personal life and the law. His earlier work has focused on LGBTI communities and the history of the movement from the decriminalisation of homosexuality to the successful campaign for gay marriage in 2015. Since 2009 he has been involved in a number of research projects on sex work as a researcher or in an advisory capacity (Drug Use, Sex Work and the Risk Environment 2009; Research into Prostitution in Northern Ireland 2004) and have been a member of the Cost Action – Comparing European Prostitution Policies: Understanding Scales of Governance 2015-17. He was a founding member of Sex Work Alliance Ireland and he is currently completing a book on migrant male sex in Dublin which will be published by Palgrave in late 2018. More details about his work and publications can be found at – https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/sociology/our-people/paul-ryan#3
	Leea Berry is a Domina and activist. She currently sits on the Board of SWAI (Sex Workers Alliance Ireland). Her experiences of harassment and eventually eviction by the Gardaí under the Nordic model in Ireland means she brings lived experience of life as a sex worker in Ireland to the ISWRN.
	Professor Graham Ellison is a criminologist with a primary interest in the policing and regulation of commercial sex. He has conducted research on both male and female sex workers in a number jurisdictions (Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Germany, Czech Republic and England). His current research interests include the intersection of radical feminist and conservative religious discourses around ‘prostitution’ that stem from the Christian Right. Both for example, reject female bodily autonomy and completely ignore the existence of male and trans sex work. Such alliances have been common in the US historically but are increasingly making headway into Europe and can be seen both in Northern Ireland and England. Other aspects of his research focus on the dynamics of commercial sex in periods of heightened political tension such as the extreme form socio-political conflict that erupted in Northern Ireland. This had a hugely disruptive effect on the nature of sex markets, raising interesting questions about how such markets evolve during periods of political transition.
	Lucy A. Smyth has a bachelor's degree in criminology and a master’s degree in history as well as a postgraduate diploma in corruption studies. She has more than 20 years of experience working with sex workers and police in Ireland and the UK. She set up and continues to run the world’s first online sex worker safety scheme, UglyMugs.ie. Although she has been involved in research and academic writing on present-day day sex work, her true passion is modern history. She is particularly interested in the history of policing of people who were perceived to not conform to the sexual norms of their time. She is looking forward to the 'Striapacha' project in 2025.