Merchant Adventurers' Hall:
Sex Work in York
Directions to the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall
In a report published in 1857, plans were set out for a meeting to be held at the Merchants Adventurers' Hall to form a society for the 'prevention and discouragement of vice and profaneness'. The discouragement and discursive stigmatisation of prostitution has historical roots, but is still very much a contemporary debate. Here we use this historical construction of sex work as ‘profane’ to look at the contemporary regulation of sex work, and think through how this might impact the choices of sex workers in the context of safety and the law.
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Mary Laing is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. She is a collaborative and interdisciplinary researcher focusing on sex work and the sex industry, she researches non-heteronormative and queer sex work, sex work and technologies, academic experiences of researching the sex industry, safety and violence, participatory methods and human rights. Mary has worked with a wide range of stakeholders, and is a founding board member, ex-vice chair and current academic trustee of National Ugly Mugs, an award-winning and internationally known sex worker safety organisation. She is also the co-developer of this website.
