My broad research interests include legal regulation of gender, race and class; gendered violence; policing; courts; and, migration. The main focus of my research is on the legal regulation of human trafficking in Canada including legal and policy development, policing, prosecution and defence strategies. I am primarily interested in how the crime of human trafficking is being 'made' at the front-lines by police, legal actors etc., and what effects this has on sex workers, racialized groups, immigrants and other marginalized communities. I am a qualitative researcher with a methodological focus on court documents and trial transcripts.

• SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2018-2020) *declined year two
• Jules and Gabrielle Léger Fellowship, SSHRC (2018-2019)
• Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral), SSHRC (2014-2017)
• Doctoral Fellowship, Nathanson Centre for Transnational Studies, Osgoode Hall Law School (2015-2016)

Books

Roots, Katrin. (2022) The Domestication of Human Trafficking: Law, Policing, and Prosecution in Canada. University of Toronto Press.

• Featured in John Howard Society blog, July 2021 & Dec 2021

Alam, Mariful Patrick Dwyer, Katrin Roots (Ed) (2023) Violence, Imagination and Resistance: Socio-legal Interrogations of Power. Edited Book Collection. Athabasca University Press.  

Journal Articles

Roots, Katrin and Emily Lockhart. “To Protect and Responsibilize: Examining the Narratives of Youth in Human Trafficking Trials” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. (2021)

De Shalit, Ann, Katrin Roots and Emily van der Meulen. “Knowledge mobilization by Canadian provincial politicians: The united front against trafficking”, Journal of Human Trafficking. (2021)

Glasbeek, Amanda, Mariful Alam, Katrin Roots. “Seeing and Not-Seeing: Race and Body Worn Cameras in Canada” Surveillance and Society. Surveillance and Society. Special issue: “Decolonizing Surveillance” (2020)

Glasbeek, Amanda, Katrin Roots, Mariful Alam. “Postcolonialism, Time, and Body Worn Cameras” (2019)

Roots, Katrin. “Human Trafficking in Canada as a Historical Continuation of the 1980s Juvenile Prostitution Panic” in The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking (2019)

Millar, Hayli, Tamara O’Doherty, Katrin Roots.“A Formidable Task: Reflections on Obtaining Legal Empirical Evidence on Human Trafficking in Canada”, Anti-Trafficking Review. (2017)

De Shalit, Ann and Katrin Roots. “Evidence that Evidence Doesn’t Matter: The Case of Human Trafficking in Canada”. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice. (2016)

Roots, Katrin. “Trafficking or Pimping? An Analysis of Canada’s Human Trafficking Legislation and its Implications”. Canadian Journal of Law and Society. (2013)

Book Chapters

Lockhart, Emily, Katrin Roots and Heather Tasker. (2023) “Law, Gendered Violence, and Justice: Critically Engaging #MeToo” in Violence, Imagination and Resistance: Socio-legal Interrogations of Power, edited by Mariful Alam, Patrick Dwyer and Katrin Roots. Athabasca University Press.

Roots, Katrin. 2019. “Human Trafficking in Canada as a Historical Continuation of the 1980s Juvenile Prostitution Panic” in The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking edited by J. Jones, J. Winterdyk. Palgrave Macmillan Publishing.

Podcast

Moore Koss, Avery (Host) & Katrin Roots (Executive Producer). (Fall 2022). “Human Trafficking: Questioning Canada’s Anti-Trafficking Framework” [Audio podcast episode]. In CRSP Talk. Wilfrid Laurier University Center for Research on Security Practices and Folktale Studio. Available at: https://crsp-talk.simplecast.com/episodes/human-trafficking

• Women, Law and Crime
• Deviance and Diversity
• The Politics of Human Trafficking