Erica Laplante

Director, Human Rights Research and Data Hub and Postdoctoral Research Associate, Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute

Erica Laplante is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute where she conducts research and provides administrative support for conferences and events, and is the director of the Human Rights and Research DataHub. Erica received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut in May 2022. Her dissertation, titled “Formally Informal? Sex Work, Stigma and Institutions,” examined how different regulatory models governing sex work impacts the rights of sex workers in Nevada and New South Wales. In doing so, she analyzed the strategies sex workers develop for institutionalizing their own protection and livelihood to navigate environments of exclusion. Previously, she served as a graduate assistant for Dodd Impact’s Democracy & Dialogues Initiative (DDI), UConn’s Business and Human Rights Initiative (BHRI) and for UConn’s Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. She holds a BA in International Relations from Connecticut College and an MA in Human Rights studies from Columbia University.