Erica Laplante

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Human Rights Institute

Erica Laplante is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Human Rights Institute where she conducts research and provides administrative support for conferences and events, and is the program manager for the Human Rights Film Festival. Erica received her PhD 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 Human Rights Institute. She holds a BA in International Relations from Connecticut College and an MA in Human Rights studies from Columbia University.