Lecture: Identifying Potential Human Trafficking Recruitment during Humanitarian Disasters and Russia's War in Ukraine

Date: July 14, 2025, 2:15 p.m.

Location:  Landshuter Str. 4, R. 017, Regensburg, 93047

Speaker: Laura A. Dean (Millikin University)

Organizer: Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World Regensburg, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, University of Regensburg, “Denkraum Ukraine” / “Think Space Ukraine”, funded by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) with funds from the Federal Foreign Office (AA)

Language: English

Abstract

Humanitarian disasters increase vulnerabilities, as well as opportunities for exploitation, particularly of displaced persons and refugees. 

Since the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, over 8,1 million refugees have left the country, and millions are internally displaced. This war, displacement, and subsequent economic crisis fuel inequalities which can lead to human trafficking in Ukraine with ripple effects around the world. 

The increase of online technologies used during displacement has led to the creation of dozens of job boards, home hosting sites, and chat groups on social media used to seek housing and employment. Technology plays a role in facilitating human trafficking, and this research aims to mitigate this by examining online recruitment tactics for human trafficking that can be applied to future displacement events and dramatically improve the disruption of human trafficking activity. 

Associate Professor of Political Science at Millikin University Dr. Laura A. Dean will share preliminary findings from the dataset on online recruitment technologies during the first 1,5 years of the war consisting of: 

• 482,000 collected and cleaned online posts from Telegram channels;
• interview data from Ukrainian anti-trafficking organizations (7 in person, 3 virtual); and
• 18 months of call data from 88,939 phone calls to Ukraine's anti-trafficking and migration support hotline.

Dr. Laura A. Dean

Dr. Laura A. Dean is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Trafficking Research Lab at Millikin University. She is also a Regional Faculty Associate at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In 2016, she was a Title VIII Summer Research Scholar at the Kennan Institute part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Kansas and an M.A. in International Studies focusing on Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Dr. Dean researches gender and politics issues focusing on women’s representation, public policy, migration, and gender-based violence in Eurasia. Her book Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia was published by Policy Press at the University of Bristol in May 2020. 

Currently, Laura A. Dean is a visiting researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg.

For more information, please see her personal website Laura A Dean.com.

Photo: https://lauraadean.blogspot.com/