Shawna Ferris
Shawna Ferris is an associate professor and the Program Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Manitoba, where she researches and teaches in sex work/prostitution studies, critical race studies, anti-colonial feminisms, and feminist responses to violence against women. She also works with local and national activists in these areas. In addition to projects associated with the collection edited with Amy Lebovitch, Shawna works with political scientist Kiera Ladner, archivist Danielle Allard, and various community activists from across the country to develop, build, and examine further possibilities for community activist digital recordkeeping, the decolonization of community recordkeeping, and the recording of marginalized histories. One of these activist collections is the Sex Work Database, which is currently coordinated by Shawna, Amy, and Danielle as part of the Sex Work Activist Histories Project. Shawna’s previous book, Sex Work and Canadian Cities: Resisting a Dangerous Order (2015, University of Alberta Press) won a number of awards, including the 2016 Manitoba Book Awards Eileen Sykes Award for Best First Book and the 2016 Book of the Year Award—Scholarly and Academic, from the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.