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Overview

Biography

Dr. Julia Laite joined ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú in 2010 after holding postdoctoral fellowships at Memorial University of Newfoundland and McGill University, Canada. Her research examines the history of migration, gender, sex and crime, as well as family history, creative history and public history. She is the author of the Disappearance of Lydia Harvey (2021), Wolfenden's Women (2020), and Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens (2012), and was principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project Trafficking Past.Ìý Her current work examines critical family history, settler colonialism and migration, and sheÌýis currently writing a book about the island of Newfoundland and the legacies of imperialism.

Julia convenes the MA in Public Histories, and the MA/MSc in Gender and Sexuality. She is part of the editorial collective of History Workshop Journal and is on the advisory board for History Workshop Online.Ìý

Highlights

• Author of
  
  (Profile, 2021)

  with Samantha Caslin, Wolfenden's Women: Prostitution in Post-War Britain (Palgrave, 2021)

  Ìý(Palgrave, 2012)

  
  

Office hours

Office hours by appointment

Administrative responsibilities

• Convenor, MA Public Histories
• Convenor, MA/MSc Gender and Sexuality

Professional memberships

• Editor, History Workshop Journal

• Fellow, Royal Historical Society

Research

Research interests

• History of migration and settler colonialism
• Women's and Gender history
• Family history, creative history, storytelling and public history
• History of Sex, Sexuality and Sexual Labour

Research overview

Julia Laite's is a historian and teller of stories. Her research interests include the history of settler colonialism, family history, migration, women and gender, crime and criminal justice, sex and sexual labour, narrative and creative history. Her new research project examines settler colonialism, place-making, family history, and storytelling in her home of Newfoundland. She writes about historiography and historical methodology, especially microhistory, digital methodologies, and history from below.

Her most recent book, (Profile, April 2021) won the Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, and the Bert Roth award for Labour History. It is a global microhistory of a case of trafficking in 1910, which reconstructs a multi-vocal story of aspiration and exploitation in the early twentieth century world.Ìý

Her first book, , examined the criminalization of prostitution in nineteenth and twentieth century London, and she has recently co-authored with Samantha Caslin a critical source edition of the Wolfenden report minutes of evidence, Wolfenden's Women. She was the principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project Trafficking Past, with co-investigator Philippa Hetherington, which has built an international network of scholars researching the history of trafficking, smuggling, and illicit migration in gendered and historical perspective.Ìý SheÌýhas guest edited a special issue of the Journal of Women's History on this topic with Dr Philippa Hetherington.

Ìý

Books

The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey: One trial, six lives and the dawn of the twentieth century (April, 2021)Ìý

Co-authored with Samantha Caslin, Wolfenden’s Women:Ìý Prostitution in Post-War BritainÌý (submitting manuscript to Palgrave in January, 2019)

Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885-1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

Ìý

Journal Articles
Ìý

'Possible Maps: Newfoundland, 1763-1829', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2025

‘The Emmet’s Inch: ‘Small’ History in a Digital Age’, Journal of Social History, 2022

‘Schooners and schoonermen, my grandfather and me’, History Workshop Journal, 2020

Ìý‘Prostitution and Work’, Journal of Women’s History Roundtable, Journal of Women’s History, (2018)

‘Traffickers and Pimps in the Era of White Slavery’, Past & Present, Volume 237, Issue 1, 1 November 2017, Pages 237–269

‘Between Scylla and Charybdis:Ìý Women’s Labour Migration and Sex Trafficking in the Early Twentieth Century,’ International Review of Social History Volume 62, Issue 1 April 2017, pp. 37-65

‘Justifiable Sensationalism: Newspapers, Public Opinion, and Official Policy about Commercial Sex in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Media History 20, 2 (2015) 126-145

‘Immoral Traffic: Sex, Mobility, Labour and the Lorry Girl in early Twentieth Century Britain’ Journal of British Studies 52, 3 (2013) 693-721

‘Historical Perspectives on Mining, Industrial Development, and Prostitution,’ Historical Journal 52, 3 (2009) 739-761

‘Taking Nellie Johnson’s Fingerprints: Prostitutes and Legal Identity in Early Twentieth Century London,’ History Workshop Journal 65, 1 (2008) 96-116

‘The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, Abolitionism, and Prostitution Law in Britain,’ Women’s History Review 17, 2 (2008) 207-223

Ìý

Book Chapters
‘London’, in Selling Sex in World Cities (London: Berg, 2018)

ÌýOther selected publications

‘Know your history?Ìý From Victorians to Housewives, Five Myths Expos

Research projects

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within ÌÇÐÄlogoÈë¿Ú:

4

Dr. Laite supervises doctoral projects related to migration law and policy in modern british history, sex and gender in the modern British world, sexual and intimate labour, and modern British social and cultural history.Ìý She also supervises projects that are methodologically interested in uncovering marginal experiences and voices, and using creative and socially engagedÌýresearchÌýmethods.

Current doctoral researchers

• NICOLA LAMBERT

  Nature of supervision:

  PRINCIPAL SUPERVISOR, Oct 2018

  Title of thesis:

  'Scot Free': Public discourse about men who were labelled as seducers in Victorian Britain

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

• ANNALISA MARTIN

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2018

  Title of thesis:

  Managing Commercial Sex in West Germany, 1950s-1980s.

  Awarded:

  2022

• LOLA DICKINSON

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2022

  Title of thesis:

  Sex Work, Public Health and Activism in Britain at the Height of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

  Description:

  This project explores sex work, sex worker activism and the discourse of sex work in Britain at the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It intervenes in debates about 1980s society, culture and politics by centering sex work within intersecting histories of labour, public health and activism. Drawing on sources from public health authorities, sex workers’-rights advocacy groups, and oral histories, the project argues that the HIV pandemic was a turning point in both the understanding and regulation of sexual labour, and the experiences of sex workers.

  Awarded:

  2026

• PETER WOOD

  Nature of supervision:

  Principal Supervisor, Oct 2020

  Awarded:

  2025

Publications

Business and community

Media

I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

• Prostitution and Trafficking
• Migration history
• Public history and family history

Outreach