Kelsey Carls

Kelsey is a doctoral student Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. Her research interests live at the intersection of sex work, public policy, and communication studies. More specifically, I am focused on the ways advocates of decriminalization policies have altered existing narratives of sex work in the US. The movement for sex workers’ rights has seen a resurgence in recent years, and I hope through my research to better understand the tactics and strategies activists have used to achieve tangible policy goals as well as broader cultural acceptance of sex workers and their labor. Consequently, my work explores the connections between narrative interventions made by sex workers and the entrance of decriminalization proposals onto state-level policy agendas.