School of Social and Political Science

Background

BOOKS

'Who Cares: the Hidden Crisis of Caregiving and How We Solve It', Hachette 2023 - shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2023

'The Truth About Modern Slavery', Pluto Press 2021

ARTICLES/CHAPTERS

'“You feel that you could have done so much more”: The practices and potentials of sex worker founded/led groups in tackling sex sector', in forthcoming book (to be titled) from Amsterdam University Press on exploitation/trafficking in the sex industry, 2024.

'Committing a benevolent insult? Reimagining the care crisis', IPPR Progressive Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, Summer 2023.  https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12349

'Overcoming ‘modern slavery’ with a rights-based labour market for all', IPPR Progressive Review, Volume 25, Issue 3, Winter 2018, Pages 244-250  https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12111

For non-academic published articles and essays including for the Washington Post, Guardian, openDemocracy and Times Literary Supplement, please see listings at https://www.emilykenway.com/articles. 

ABOUT

I have spent around a decade working on social justice issues in campaigns and policy roles. In recent years, this has focused on labour exploitation and sex worker rights, in roles within charities and as a policy adviser to the UK's first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. In 2021, my first book was published. 'The Truth about Modern Slavery' (Pluto Press) drew on cognitive linguistics and an understanding of narratives and frames to show how exploitation has been reframed as 'modern slavery' and how this acts upon public and policy perspectives to prevent meaningful action. It was described as a 'powerful treatise' by the Guardian and is now on masters syllabi around the country. My second book, 'Who Cares: the hidden crisis of caregiving and how we solve it' (Hachette, 2023) uses personal experience, interviews with caregivers from around the world and in-depth research to explore the realities of unpaid caregivers and put forward solutions to the 'care crisis', both globally and locally. I give regular guest lectures and talks on the subjects of exploitation and care and have recently begun tutoring at the University, which I greatly enjoy. I am currently on the boards of Commonwealth thinktank, which promotes democratic public ownership, and National Ugly Mugs, which aims to prevent violence against sex workers. 

My PhD research focuses on the intersection between homelessness and exploitation. Specifically, I explore how people experiencing homelessness strategise about 'work' offers, informed by a Bourdieusian theoretical framework. By collecting new primary data - interviews - with people currently or recently experiencing homelessness, I hope to elucidate the factors that make someone in this situation more or less likely to be exploited, and furthermore to tease out the factors that may make a situation seem exploitative or not dependent on the individual's personal and structural position. 

During the course of my PhD, I have enjoyed tutoring, guest lecturing, devising course content and delivering it, across a range of topics, including:

• Qualitative methods of data collection
• Ethics in qualitative interviewing
• Unpaid care 
• Qualitative research designs, including epistemology and ontology, use of theory, methods and analysis