Co-produced sex work research is the practice of centring sex workers as collaborators in study design, analysis, and dissemination. Evidano is an AI-powered qualitative data analysis platform that helps researchers analyze interviews, open-ended surveys, and documents. According to LSE Impact (27 July 2026), academic “whorephobia” excludes sex workers from research and risks producing extractive or stigmatizing findings. This post explains the LSE Impact roundtable and the open-access roundtable paper in Porn Studies (2026), and gives practical, AI-enabled workflows researchers can use to implement the paper’s seven recommendations.
Key Takeaways
According to LSE Impact (27 July 2026), academic exclusion of sex workers produces research that can be extractive, stigmatizing, and poor at informing policy. The LSE Impact post summarizes a roundtable and an open-access roundtable paper published in Porn Studies (2026) that issues seven practical recommendations for co-produced research. AI-enabled qualitative tools can operationalize those recommendations at scale without replacing community leadership.
- 27 July 2026: LSE Impact published a summary arguing academia’s whorephobia excludes sex workers from research.
- 2026: The roundtable paper in Porn Studies lists seven recommendations and names eight authors.
- The roundtable emphasizes making participation worthwhile, including payment or advocacy support when budgets do not allow payment.
- The European Sex Workers Alliance’s Gold Standard Guidelines are cited by the roundtable as a core ethical resource.
What Happened: co-produced sex work research
What happened: a roundtable led by Carmela Morgillo convened sex workers, academics, and researchers with lived experience to produce a position statement and methodological guide advocating for co-production.
According to LSE Impact (27 July 2026), the initiative responds to persistent exclusion and stigma that the post calls “whorephobia”, a term traced in the post to Jessica Simpson’s formulation that captures “the hatred, disgust and fear of sex workers: that intersects with racism, xenophobia, classism and transphobia.”
According to the open-access roundtable paper in Porn Studies (2026), the co-authors produced seven concrete recommendations, including inviting sex workers to consultations, paying participants, avoiding intrusive questions, and citing sex workers directly when they consent.
The roundtable paper centers the principle “nothing about us, without us” and cites the European Sex Workers Alliance Gold Standard Guidelines as a foundational ethics reference.
Findings Snapshot
| Date | Metric | Value | Implication |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | LSE Impact blog | Published summary | Raised visibility of exclusion and recommended co-production |
| 2026 | Porn Studies roundtable paper | Open-access paper with 8 named authors | Provides seven practical recommendations for ethical research |
| 2021 | Shadowbanning paper cited | Prior work informed co-production methods | Shows past collaborations with sex worker communities improved research questions |
| 2026 | Roundtable recommendations | 7 numbered recommendations | Actionable checklist for researchers and institutions |
Implications for qualitative researchers: co-produced sex work research
Implication: researchers must redesign study governance, consent, and credit to avoid extractive practices and to center community priorities.
According to LSE Impact (27 July 2026), researchers should open spaces for sex worker participation, make positionality standard, interrogate extraction risks, and offer payment or advocacy when budgets cannot cover fees.
According to the roundtable paper in Porn Studies (2026), research teams should schedule asynchronous participation options and avoid intrusive demands that force disclosure of survival strategies.
Practical changes for teams include updating ethics forms to permit co-authorship, budgeting for participant fees, and citing community guidance such as the European Sex Workers Alliance Gold Standard Guidelines.
Ethics note: this guidance is research-focused and non-diagnostic; researchers working on clinical or legal questions should consult institutional review boards and relevant legal counsel.
How Evidano Helps
Problem: Extractive transcription and slow synthesis → Solution: fast, secure transcription and thematic coding
Evidano provides automated transcription with custom dictionaries and PII redaction to protect participants, which helps operationalize the roundtable recommendation to avoid intrusive questions and secure participants’ anonymity.
See features at Evidano Features and Speech-to-Text for secure, searchable transcripts.
Problem: Hard to credit community contributions → Solution: traceable quotes, co-author tagging, and citation exports
Evidano’s document ingestion and export tools let teams tag community contributors, store consent metadata, and export verbatim quotes for citation, supporting the roundtable’s advice to “cite directly” when participants consent.
This makes it easier to honor the roundtable’s call to give sex workers academic credit or clear public acknowledgement.
Problem: Burden of synchronous meetings → Solution: asynchronous participation and AI chat over documents
Evidano supports asynchronous engagement via uploaded transcripts and AI chat over documents so contributors can review, annotate, and comment on their own schedules, aligning with the roundtable recommendation to be flexible.
See the AI Chatbot page for examples of conversational review workflows.
Problem: Rapid thematic synthesis required for policy → Solution: thematic, frequency, and cross-segment analysis
Evidano’s thematic coding, co-occurrence networks, and cross-segment comparisons let researchers deliver accessible, community-prioritized findings quickly, so policy-facing work is informed by participant expertise rather than outsider assumptions.
Evidano encrypts data and never shares user data with third-party models; details are in Data Security.
FAQ: co-produced sex work research
What is co-produced sex work research and why does it matter?
Answer: Co-produced sex work research centers sex workers as collaborators in design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination.
According to LSE Impact (27 July 2026), centering community expertise reduces extractive outcomes and improves policy relevance.
How many recommendations did the roundtable produce and what are examples?
Answer: The roundtable published seven numbered recommendations focused on inclusion, positionality, ethical interrogation, payment, avoiding intrusive questions, flexibility, and citation.
According to the open-access roundtable paper in Porn Studies (2026), examples include offering payment or advocacy support when payment is not possible and scheduling asynchronous ways to participate.
Can AI tools help implement these recommendations without replacing community leadership?
Answer: Yes, AI tools can automate laborious tasks while preserving community decision-making if designed and governed collaboratively.
According to the roundtable summary on LSE Impact (27 July 2026), researchers should act as translators and amplifiers for sex workers rather than speaking for them.
How should I handle attribution and consent for quotes?
Answer: Obtain explicit, documented consent for attribution and provide options for anonymity or selective citation.
According to the roundtable paper in Porn Studies (2026), citing sex workers directly when they consent helps value community knowledge and supports fair credit.
Conclusion & Next Steps
The LSE Impact summary (27 July 2026) and the roundtable paper in Porn Studies (2026) make a clear case: co-produced methods reduce harm, increase relevance, and improve policy impact.
Practical next steps for teams are to adopt the roundtable’s seven recommendations, consult the European Sex Workers Alliance Gold Standard Guidelines, and adopt tools that enable secure transcription, asynchronous participation, and traceable attribution.
If you want to pilot an AI-enabled co-production workflow that preserves participant control and credit, Try Evidano for free.