Jaana Ahtiainen is a doctoral researcher in Folklore Studies at the University of Helsinki, holding a MA in Folklore Studies and a M.Soc.Sc in Sociology. Her dissertation examines memories and narratives related to Finnish sex work and erotic labour, with an emphasis on the experiences of individuals working within this field.
Laura Horsmanheimo is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. She has a BA and an MA degree in political science from the University of Helsinki. Her current work focuses on representations of sex work from perspectives of epistemic (in)justice, cultural politics, queer activism, and performative theory. Horsmanheimo studies sex workers’ inclusion and exclusion by concentrating on the dynamics of resistance and vulnerability. Along with her research, Horsmanheimo has worked in close collaboration with sex workers' rights activists in Finland. In spring 2026, Horsmanheimo was a visiting researcher at the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Linköping, Sweden. In her future work, she wishes to explore deeper the questions of sex work activism in Nordic Countries and beyond and co-develop community-based and art-based research methods.
Isabelle Johansson is a lecturer in sociology and criminology at Kristianstad University and holds a PhD in social anthropology from Lund University, Sweden. Her research examines the exchange of sexual services for payment, focusing on stigma, moral reasoning, and intimacy through the analysis of public attitudes and the experiences of sex industry participants. In her dissertation, In My Secret Life: Stigma, Moral Work, and Intimacy Among Swedish Men Who Pay for Sex, she analyzes how men who pay for sex negotiate secrecy, responsibility, and ethical self-understandings in a context of criminalization. More broadly, her research interests include other topics related to intimacy and sexuality, like romance fraud, as well as research methods. She is driven by curiosity and a commitment to evidence in seeking to understand the complexities of human behavior.
I am a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Turku. I am researching the effects of the laws that regulate sex work in Finland. I am further interested in how sex workers perceive the different ways of regulating sex work. I have interviewed sex workers for my dissertation.
Researcher IG: ccriminologist