AI-enabled Co-produced Sex Work Research

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: 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.

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.

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.