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Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) Temple University Japan and the Economic Security Intelligence Lab (ESIL) at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), the University of Tokyo, are pleased to invite you to an online webinar featuring Dr. Laura Murphy, Professor of Human Rights at Sheffield Hallam University and Carr-Ryan Fellow at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Murphy’s long-standing research on forced labor in the Uyghur region faced unprecedented interference in 2024, which culminated in the Sheffield Hallam University’s decision to discontinue her research in 2025, a development widely reported by major outlets including the BBC and The Guardian. Her case has sparked urgent debate about how external actors may seek to influence or curtail academic inquiry. Building on this and other recent examples, the webinar will explore how shifting international dynamics are creating new forms of transnational pressure on universities, and what these developments mean for academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

The session will examine the broader implications of such pressures for scholars, students, and research institutions, including constraints on transparency, access, governance, and institutional safeguards. As global political uncertainty continues to grow, these issues are becoming increasingly relevant for universities in Japan as well. The event aims to provide researchers, administrators, and students with insights into how higher education institutions can better protect academic freedom and ensure the integrity of their research environments.

In addition to Dr. Murphy, the event will feature opening remarks by Robert Dujarric of ICAS Temple University Japan and will be moderated by Akira Igata, the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo.

Speaker bio
Laura T. Murphy is Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). She received the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award and was a British Academy Visiting Fellow and a John G. Medlin Jr. Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

She is the author of Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt (Columbia Global Reports, 2021), The New Slave Narrative: The Battle over Representations of Contemporary Slavery (Columbia University Press, 2019), Survivors of Slavery: Modern-Day Slave Narratives (Columbia University Press, 2014), and Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature (Ohio University Press, 2012). She is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery (Cambridge UP, 2022).

Her research team has published a series of reports and evidence briefs about the Chinese government's intertwined systems of internment and forced labor that has been inflicted on the people of the Uyghur Region. The work investigates the international supply chains that have ties to those repressive systems, including those attached to the solar, apparel, chemicals/plastics, automotive, and critical minerals sectors. She has provided expert testimony and evidence on the crisis in the Uyghur Region to the U.S., U.K. and Australian governments and EU leadership. She also provided private briefings to government agencies, advocacy groups, law firms, and others interested in the issue globally.

She has previously conducted research on forced labor in India, Nigeria, Ghana, the United States, and Canada.

She has recently been part of a team that created core competencies for medical professionals addressing human trafficking in healthcare settings with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her previous research on the intersection of homeless youth and human trafficking in the U.S. and Canada provided a four-pronged, victim-centered community blueprint for how service providers can best assist youth at risk of trafficking, based on interviews with over 600 homeless youth in the U.S. and Canada. She has consulted for the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Office of Victims of Crime, and the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center, as well as other government agencies, workers unions, investor groups, law firms, and advocacy groups.

The seminar will be conducted in English, and pre-registration is required to participate.