Life
Murphy grew up in Louisiana where she says it was impossible to keep the evidence of slavery secret. There were fancy mansions that were owned by the plantation owners. That privileged life ended after the US Civil War but Murphy makes the point that life improved for many people as a result. [1]
Murphy worked in the English department of Loyola University in New Orleans. She was an associate professor of English who led the university's Modern Slavery Research Project. She published her first book Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature and that was awarded the 2014 African Literature Association First Book Prize. [2] In 2016 she was a co-author of a study to estimate the number of trafficked people there were in Greater New Orleans. [3]
She became a professor of Human Rights at Sheffield Hallam University's Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice. [4] She investigates human trafficking. [5] and she has investigated modern slavery in several countries. Her 2021 book Freedomville exposed a deeper story behind a group of modern slaves who overthrew their masters in India. The revolt had not been non-violent and the narrative was more complex than generally understood. [6]
She has spent time looking at forced labour in China. In 2022 she published "Financing and Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region" which established links between what some call "a genocide" and funding from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation. [7] In that year, Sheffield Hallam University's vice-chancellor, Sir Chris Husbands, wrote about his pride in her research, while acknowledging that this might reduce the number of Chinese students at their university. [8]
She was employed by the US Department of Homeland Security to assist them in implementing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act during the presidency of Joe Biden. [9]
In 2023 she was named Champion of the Year by the Human Trafficking Legal Center. The human tracking center was started by Martina Vandenberg in America and although they gave Murphy the award, Murphy pointed out that it was her research team that had created important reports. Most of her team she said were Uyghurs. Her university boasted that her team's work had prevented $1.8 billion of Chinese goods from being exported to America. [10]
She returned from a career break [11] and she was told by her university in 2025 that she could not continue her research into human rights abuses in China. [12] The university had made the decision following pressure from the Chinese Government. [8] Moreover, the university decided to not publish her research despite being legally obliged to do so with the bodies who funded her research. They returned funds from the Global Rights Compliance (GRC) to avoid publishing her research about "Uyghur forced labour in the critical minerals supply chain". The Global Rights Compliance published her work themselves. [8]
Murphy appealed the decision and demanded copies of correspondence. The university did a U-turn and said that they had decided to back her research. [12] Her university apologised to her. Murphy noted that UK universities were underfunded, however there were only a small percentage of Chinese students at her university. The university had been concerned by pressure applied to their employees in Beijing and difficulty with getting insurance. The Minister of Education, David Lammy, offered his support and noted that academic freedom should be assured. [11]
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