Isabel Crowhurst

Dr Isabel Crowhurst

Small Group Project 2018-19

Comparing the taxation of prostitution in Europe: experiences and negotiations with laws and fiscal arrangements

This project explores the under-studied and under-theorized nexus between taxation and prostitution, and sheds light on the role of fiscal policies in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers. Drawing on critical fiscal studies, we explore taxation as a social practice which has a key role in shaping the citizenship status of those who operate in the sex industry. Their political, economic and social inclusion/exclusion are influenced by fiscal policies which need to be looked at in the context of the governance of prostitution.

More information

Research outcomes

Crowhurst, I. (2024).

Sex work and gendered tax imaginaries. Modern Italy, 29(2), 182–196.

Crowhurst, I. (2019).

The Ambiguous Taxation of Prostitution: the Role of Fiscal Arrangements in Hindering the Sexual and Economic Citizenship of Sex Workers. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 16(2), 166-178.

Areas of interest

Sociology Sexuality Intimacy Commercial Sex Citizenship

Cohort

FG4

Biography

Isabel Crowhurst is Reader in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Essex. They joined the Department of Sociology in September 2014, having previously held academic positions at Kingston University, Birkbeck, and the University of Westminster. At Birkbeck, they completed an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, following a PhD in Sociology at the London School of Economics and a Master’s in International Affairs at Carleton University, Canada.

Their research examines the shifting and contested forms of knowledge produced around non-normative sexual practices and intimate lives, how these are shaped by and shape socio-economic dynamics, and how they are negotiated and understood in everyday lived experience. This work has developed across two main strands of research: the regulation and governance of commercial sex, and the changing nature of intimate citizenship regimes in Europe.

Biographical details correct as of 11.05.26