Welcome! My name is Dr. Lauren Moton and I’m an Assistant Professor at CUNY John Jay College. I hold a joint appointment between the Department of Criminal Justice and the International Criminal Justice Program. Previously, I was a Senior Research Associate with the Human Exploitation and Resilience Program at NYU's Marron Institute of Urban Management. Informed by Black feminist and queer criminology, my research agenda broadly examines the intersection of victimization, marginalized identity, and criminal legal systems in both the US and international contexts. 

​

This agenda is exemplified through my dissertation research examining human trafficking victim identity construction in Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (HTICs) with 75 defendants and court stakeholders in three diverse sites across the US: New York, NY, Columbus, OH, and Nashville, TN. My current work explores Tanzanian women domestic workers' usage of mobile messaging applications during and after migration to exploitative work abroad. My latest project examines information and communication technologies used by commercial sex workers as a tool to prevent victimization from clients.

 

My research has received recognition and awards from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing. My work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Darald and Julie Libby Foundation, the Graduate Center, CUNY, and Vera Institute of Justice. 

​

Additionally, I have experience serving as the project director for several federally funded research studies based both in the US and abroad. My work is topically related to human trafficking, exploitation, and resilience and methodologically related to intervention development, monitoring and evaluation, applied participatory action research, and mixed methods. My work spans several countries, including Thailand, India, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Costa Rica, and the US. 

 

I earned my B.S. in Criminal Justice from University of Cincinnati, my M.S. in Criminal Justice from Bowling Green State University, and my M.Phil and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the CUNY Graduate Center.