Lauren Moton, Faculty Fellow
Dr. Lauren Moton is an Assistant Professor of International Criminal Justice at CUNY John Jay College. Her research examines human trafficking, labor exploitation, organized crime, and digital-age vulnerabilities through feminist, community-based, and global justice frameworks. Drawing on fieldwork and partnerships both internationally and domestically, Dr. Moton’s work interrogates how technology, migration, and structural inequality shape both risk and resistance within contexts of forced labor, trafficking, and illicit economies.
Recent publications reflect this focus: In Anti-Trafficking Review she led “Ethiopian Domestic Workers and Exploitative Labour in the Middle East: The Role of Social Networks and Gender in Migration Decisions” (2025), analyzing how social networks influence exploitative labor outcomes for Ethiopian women. In the Journal of Human Trafficking she published “An Exploration into the Lived Experiences of Young People Forced to Beg and Sell Goods in Kampala, Uganda” (2023), the first study of its kind shedding light on youth forced labor and street economies in Uganda. And in the International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice she recently published “‘Victim is such a touchy word’: Rethinking Victimhood Among Human Trafficking Intervention Court Defendants in the US” (2025), which interrogates how the label “victim” is constructed within human trafficking-intervention courts.
Across these initiatives, Dr. Moton employs multi-method, participatory designs to center survivor expertise and advance evidence-based, rights-affirming interventions. Her scholarship bridges research, pedagogy, and practice, emphasizing digital resistance, anti-organized crime approaches, and survivor-led strategies for more effective anti-trafficking policy and education. At John Jay, she teaches courses such as Human Trafficking in the Digital Age, fostering critical engagement with global exploitation, organized crime, and ethical response.