I am an ESRC funded PhD student in the History Department at Lancaster University. My PhD project analyses the relationship between feminism and prostitution through an exploration of Brazilian putafeminismo, a feminism created by sex workers across Lusophone and Hispanic cultures based upon the ideals of choice, agency, and control relating to sex work. I am particularly interested in how a focus on Brazilian forms of putafeminismo not only offers broader conceptualisations of feminism through Global South perspectives but enables a more inclusive framework that critically engages with Brazil’s vibrant LGBTQIA+ activism, and colonial legacies of racial sexual slavery that continue to restrictively stereotype prostitutes as sexual chattel.

 

My MA thesis was centred on the themes of agency, power, sexuality, and slavery. I explored the complex relationship between historical accounts and immeasurable stories produced across the African diaspora. I undertook an interdisciplinary analysis of historical accounts generated in the Americas, and contemporary fictional narratives, in order to highlight how Afro-descendant women both encounter colonial narratives and counter archival silences around enslaved women’s sexuality. Outside of academia, I have written for EPOCH on the life of Chica da Silva.

 

I welcome submissions relating to Women’s+ History, and I am particularly interested in modern feminism, social and cultural histories, popular culture, and literature.