Ailish Saker has been commissioned to support our project in 2021/22, Practitioner Responses to Child Trafficking: Emerging Good Practice, as a freelance Research Associate.
Ailish’s expertise lies in responding to child exploitation. She is currently undertaking doctoral research at the University of Oxford on the experiences of victims of non-recent child sexual abuse in football within the criminal justice system. This project has received funding from the FIFA Research Scholarship, which resulted in the development of an in-depth report exploring the findings from this research in 2021. Alongside her research, Ailish is also a Junior Dean at St Hilda’s College in Oxford.
Prior to undertaking the PhD, she completed the MPhil in Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Oxford (2017-19) and also holds an undergraduate degree in American Studies from the University of Sussex (2012-16). Ailish has a strong interest in youth justice, which was sparked while facilitating creative arts workshops at a local youth detention centre in Michigan, USA. On returning to the UK, Ailish worked for two years as an Appropriate Adult, supporting juvenile and vulnerable adult detainees upon their arrest, before continuing her academic studies at Oxford.