Dr Lorena Arocha

Assistant Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

Lorena Arocha’s research has focused on exploring intersections in policy and practice in relation to critical slavery studies. Critical slavery studies relates to scholarship that aims to critically examine the impact of phenomena that falls under the umbrella term of ‘modern slavery’ and often includes human trafficking, forced labour and other forms of exploitation. She has published and worked on projects evaluating the implementation of child sexual exploitation and trafficking policy in the UK, explored the roles of organisations in anti-trafficking work in South Asia, the role of migrant and refugee community organisations in the development of modern slavery policy in the UK, the role of ‘modern slavery’ in efforts to address female labour exploitation in agricultural sectors across a variety of contexts (i.e. South Asia and Southern Spain), conducted student-led evaluations of non-governmental services, including provisions for asylum-seeking young people and women in sex work. Her research has been funded by both academic and non-academic institutions, including Comic Relief, British Academy and the ESRC.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Critical slavery studies (i.e. modern slavery, human trafficking, labour exploitation) migration and gender

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
The Problem of the ‘Modern Slavery’ Discourse on Workers’ Attempts to Centre Work: Case Studies from the Indian Context, Arocha, L., Pattadath, B., Gopal, M., Chattopadhyay, R. 16 Oct 2025, Modern Slavery and the Governance of Global Value Chains, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press