Anna Ratecka

I am a postdoctoral researcher at a postdoctoral researcher and principal investigator of the project Infrastructures of Care and Justice: Comparative Research on the Sex Worker Movement in Poland and Norway at AGH University of Science and Technology. My work is situated at the intersection of socio-legal studies, feminist theory, political sociology, and social movement research. I focus on sex workers’ mobilisations, sex work governance, anti-trafficking politics, and feminist organising, with particular attention to post-socialist and Central and Eastern European contexts.

Key research areas

• Sex work governance and policy: legal frameworks regulating sex work, the politics of criminalisation and decriminalisation, the governance of prostitution, and the impact of policy regimes on the lived experiences of sex workers.
• Sex workers’ rights mobilisations: advocacy strategies, struggles for recognition, collective organising, and the shifting frames through which sex workers are represented within civil society and public debate.
• Feminist theory and organising: feminist approaches to research practice, internal dynamics of feminist mobilisations, and strategies of belonging and othering within feminist movements in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe.
• Civil society, care, and justice: infrastructures of solidarity, anti-trafficking mobilisations, gender equality policies, and the resilience and resourcefulness of civil society actors under conditions of democratic backsliding and neoliberal reform.

My work combines qualitative methodologies, socio-legal analysis, and engaged research practices. I am particularly interested in how legal regimes, moral economies, and feminist politics shape possibilities for recognition, justice, and collective action.

I received my PhD in Sociology from the Jagiellonian University in 2022, with a dissertation on the recognition of sex workers in Poland. I have previously held positions at the Jagiellonian University and the University of Oslo and have been a visiting researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford, and the University of Vienna. I am currently a researcher in the international programme SustainAction External link., External link. which examines social movements and civil society in post-collectivist contexts.

Ongoing Research Projects

• Infrastructures of Care and Justice: Comparative Research on the Sex Worker Movement in Poland and Norway (Principal Investigator, AGH University of Science and Technology)
• SUSTAINACTION: Exploring the Resilience and Resourcefulness of Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (co-researcher, Södertörn University)