Current PhD Students

Sarah Dara

Thesis Title:

Am I a Victim: Agency and Sex Trafficking Narratives in South Asian Literature

Supervisor:

Dr JT Welsch & Dr Juliana Mensah

Description:

Sarah’s critical-creative PhD investigates the depiction of the lives and experiences of female sex trafficking survivors in South Asia through a novel and critical thesis. Her research examines questions of agency and interiority, focusing on how survivors’ voices are presented in 1970s to present-day literature from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Her novel is an insight into the life and sex trafficking experience of a teenager from Pakistan, before being trafficked to post escape. To inform her writing, Sarah will also conduct interviews with female survivors in Pakistan. In doing so, this PhD contributes to literary research on sex trafficking by highlighting the empowerment of survivors within the trafficking experience, shedding light on the need to include their voices and discuss the long-term effects of sex trafficking.

Sarah’s multidisciplinary research has been influenced by her time as a journalist and creative writing instructor in Karachi, Pakistan. She holds a BA in English from the University of Leicester and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Nottingham. Her creative and research interests include agency, issues of representation, contemporary literature, narrative structures and point of view, gender and feminist studies, race and postcolonial studies, trauma studies, human rights studies, and South Asia.

Alongside her PhD, Sarah produces and manages literary and cross-arts projects with Renaissance One including a role as project manager for This Is Who We Are, a UK-Australian movement of female artists, producers and creatives of colour. She also works as a writer for The Bard Review in Karachi. Her poetry and prose have been published in Himal Southasian, the Herald, Soch Videos, Newsline Magazine, Literally Stories, Teen Belle Magazine, Exploration and The Bard Review.