History professor Nancy Wingfield has received an International Research & Exchanges Board Short-Term Travel Grant that will support a trip to L’viv, Ukraine, this summer for research on trafficking in women and girls for a book she’s writing.
The book, titled “Bohemian Bodies: The Regulation of Prostitution in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle,” examines the regulation of prostitution in late imperial Austria from 1880 to 1918. The travel grant has a policy component, so the research could be used to provide historic background to officials currently addressing contemporary trafficking of women and children.
While in L’viv, Wingfield also will participate in an interdisciplinary conference, “Sex in the Cities: Prostitution, White Slaving, and Sexual Minorities in Europe,” to be held at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. The conference includes a roundtable presentation by members of local NGOs on trafficking in contemporary Ukraine.