Julia is Professor of Social Research in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. She began her career with research that drew on Marxist labour process theory to explore the variability of capitalist employment relations in standard forms of work in the UK (Privatization and Employment Relations, 1993, Cassell), then moved to address prostitution as a form of non-standard work and to explore the diversity of sex work in terms of its social organisation and the power relations it involves (Prostitution, Power and Freedom, 1998, Polity).


Julia has also undertaken research on sex tourism, child prostitution, and child migration (Children in the Global Sex Trade, 2005, Polity). From 2001, her work has questioned dominant discourse on 'trafficking’ and ‘modern slavery' (Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom, 2015, Palgrave Macmillan). In 2018, she was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for a project titled 'Modern Marronage? The Pursuit and Practice of Freedom in the Contemporary World'. Among other things, the project brought histories of slave states’ efforts to prevent enslaved people’s flight and marronage into dialogue with contemporary global north states’ efforts to restrict the mobility of global south people today.

Throughout, Julia has been preoccupied by the paradox of liberalism as an ideology that offers an inspiring statement of human equality and freedom, and yet can be, and has been, marshalled in support of the violent subjugation of truly immense numbers of people.