Staff profile

I first joined the Department in October 2011 as a Teaching Fellow and was appointed as an Assistant Professor in April 2012. Prior to this, I undertook research in the third sector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). My research for the NSPCC focused on discourses around risk and the age of the child, and social care responses to young people. I have also worked as a research consultant for other third sector organisations including the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture in the UK (now Freedom from Torture).

A longstanding research interest centres around the ongoing international academic and policy debates on the trafficking of persons, asylum seeking and migration. I first explored the emergence of trafficking as a social problem in my doctoral research, completed at Newcastle University in 2008. My doctoral research considered how trafficking was constructed through the law, the media, within academic research and by activist groups. My doctoral research specifically explored the production and reception of stories/ narratives relating to trafficking into the sex industry. Stories/ narratives told by those identified as victims were analysed alongside responses to these narratives by the police, third sector organisations, the immigration services, and in particular in UK Home Office asylum determinations. In this respect, my research explored the social consequences related to the telling of stories, as well as the social and cultural processes within which stories are and/or may be told. More recent research projects in this area include an Institute of Advance Study sponsored project: 

An Abolitionist Industrial Complex: Patterns of anti-trafficking / anti-slavery policy and practice in the 21st century (with Siobhan Mcgrath Geography, Durham University). Further details here: https://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/201819projects/mcgrath

Other research includes:

• Participatory research with women who sell or swap sex in the North East. Funded by Northern Rock, with Maggie O’Neill (Cork), Colleen Bilton, Kelly Stockdale (Northumbria), Kath, Hannah and community co-researchers.
• Research exploring Criminal Justice System responses to people with learning disabilities in cases of sexual assault/ rape. Funded by N8 Policing Research Partnership Project People and Knowledge Exchange, with Helen Williams (Sunderland); Northumbria police and Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland (RCTN). Summary report, full report and presentation available here: https://rctn.org.uk/campaigns/people-with-learning-disabilities-who-report/
• An evaluation of RSACC SELFIE (Sexualisation, Exploitation, Love, Friendship, Information and Empowerment) Young People’s Sex and Relationships Project, with Hannah King (Durham).

I work with community partners A Way Out, Changing Lives and Low Newton Prison. via the North East Sex Work Forum https://www.neswf.co.uk/, 

• Sociology of social problems
• Gender and Asylum law
• Sex Work
• Sociology of identities
• Sociology of narratives and stories
• UK Child protection, safeguarding policy and practice
• Anti-trafficking/ anti-modern slavery
• Participatory Research Methods

• Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse
• Centre for Social Justice and Community Action
• Communities and Social Justice
• Criminal Justice, Social Harm and Inequalities
• Violence and Abuse

Authored book

• Grace, Sharon, O'Neill, Maggie, Walker, Tammi, King, Hannah, Baldwin, Lucy, Jobe, Alison, Lynch, Orla, Measham, Fiona, O'Brien, Kate & Seaman, Vicky (2022). Criminal Women: Gender Matters. Bristol University Press.

Chapter in book

• O'Neill, Maggie & Jobe, Alison (2020). Gender and Migration. In Introducing Gender and Women's Studies: fifth edition. Richardson, Diane & Robinson, Victoria Red Globe Press. Chapter 10.
• Jobe, A. (2010). Accessing help and services: trafficking survivors' experiences in the United Kingdom. In Human trafficking in Europe: character, causes and consequences. G. Wylie & P. McRedmond Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian. 164-180.
• Jobe, A. (2009). Accessing Help and Services: Trafficking Survivor’s Experiences in the United Kingdom. In (Re)Interpretations: the shapes of justice in women's experience. L. Dresdner & L. Peterson Cambridge Scholars Press.
• Jobe, A (2008). Sexual Trafficking: A New Sexual Story? In Gender and interpersonal violence: language, action and representation. K. Throsby & F. Alexander Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 66-82.

Journal Article

• Jobe, Alison, Stockdale, Kelly & O’Neill, Maggie (2022). Stigma and Service Provision for Women Selling Sex. Findings from Community-based Participatory Research. Ethics and Social Welfare 16(2): 112-128.
• Jobe, Alison (2020). Telling the Right Story at the Right Time: women seeking asylum with stories of trafficking into the sex industry. Sociology 54(5): 936-952.
• Brooks-Gordon, Belinda, Wijers, Marjan & Jobe, Alison (2020). Justice and Civil Liberties on Sex Work in Contemporary International Human Rights Law. Social Sciences. Special Issue: Sex Work, Gender Justice, and the Law 9(1): 4.
• Jobe, A. & Gorin, S. (2013). 'If kids don't feel safe they don't do anything': young people's views on seeking and receiving help from Children's Social Care Services in England. Child & Family Social Work 18(4): 429-438.
• Gorin, S & Jobe, A (2013). Young People Who Have Been Maltreated: Different Needs--Different Responses? The British Journal of Social Work 43(7): 1330-1346

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Jobe, A. (2008). The causes and consequences of re-trafficking. Global Eye on Human Trafficking 2(1): 1-4.

Report

• Jobe, A, Williams, H, Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland & Northumbria Police. (2020). Access to Justice? The experiences of people with learning disabilities who report rape or sexual assault. Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland.
• Jobe, A (2018). Reflections on a Doctoral study of Human Trafficking. A methodological journey from life story interviews to analysing asylum applications. SAGE.
• O'Neill, M., Jobe, A., Bilton, C., Stockdale, K., Kath, Hannah & Community co-researchers (2017). Peer Talk: Hidden Stories. A Participatory Research Project with Women Who Sell or Swap Sex in Teesside. School of Applied Social Sciences. Stockton-on-Tees, A Way Out.
• O'Neill, Maggie & Jobe, Alison (2016). Policy Briefing: Adult Sex Work, Law and Policy: new horizons in the 21st Century. Discover Society.
• Rees, G, Gorin, S, Jobe, A, Stein, M, Medford, R & Goswami, H (2010). Safeguarding young people: responding to young people aged 11 to 17 who are maltreated. Executive Summary. The Children's Society.
• Rees, G, Gorin, S, Jobe, A, Stein, M Medford, R & Goswami, H (2010). Safeguarding young people: responding to young people aged 11 to 17 who are maltreated. The Children's Society.
• Jobe, A. (2010). The Causes and Consequences of Re-trafficking: Evidence from the IOM Human Trafficking Database. International Organization for Migration (IOM).
• Jobe, A. (2009). External Evaluation of the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture, North East/ Department of Health Project: “Building Relationships and Promoting Human Rights: Developing a model of good practice for clinicians who are working with survivors of torture or organised violence in the Newcastle Primary Care Mental Health Service”. Commissioned by the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture.