Page 6 / De iure September 2018
Buchmann Bulletin
TraffLab:
An international “laboratory” for anti-human
trafficking research
Dr. Hila Shamir has launched TraffLab in
April this year, a groundbreaking research
project funded by the European Research
Council (ERC).
The study marks a departure from the
criminalization and border control
approaches to anti-trafficking efforts, and
is expanding the tool kit to include labor-
based strategies that target the structure
of labor markets prone to severely
exploitative practices.
Dr. Hila Shamir
TraffLab is connecting scholars and
organizations across sectoral and
geographic divides, sharing resources and
facilitating opportunities for a truly global
collaboration. Dr. Shamir will be joined
by a couple of postdoctoral researchers
from the United Kingdom, Jon Davies
and Irene Piertopaoli, and a postdoctoral
researcher from Israel, Yahel Kurlander.
In addition, four guest researchers from
Germany, England, France and Finland
will participate in the research for a period
of three months, as well as a team of Israeli
research fellows: Dr. Tamar Barkay, Dr.
Avinoam Cohen, Dr. Yuval Livnat, Dr.
Tamar Megiddo, Assaf Bondi, and Hanny
Ben Israel. The research will include a
clinical element in collaboration with
TAU Law’s Workers’ Rights Clinic, led by
Adv. Idit Zimmerman, who will be joined
for the project by Adv. Shimri Segal.
Dr. Shamir teaches and researches in
the fields of labor and employment
law, welfare law, immigration law, and
feminist legal thought, and serves as
the academic advisor of the Workers’
Rights Legal Clinic. In May, Shamir was
appointed a member of the Israel Young
Academy (IYA). Established in 2012 by
the Israel Academy of Sciences, the IYA
was founded with the intention of creating
a framework comprising the country’s
leading young scholars in the humanities,
social sciences and natural sciences. •