Laura Murphy is the Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University (UK). Her latest working report focuses on forced labor in the Uyghur Region of China, including "Driving Force", which reveals massive and expanding links between western car brands and Uyghur abuses, "Until Nothing is Left", which documents in great detail the egregious human rights violations of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and "Built on Repression", which investigates the increased manufacturing of PVC through state-sponsored labour transfers in China’s Uyghur Region and the routes by which the resulting building materials make their way into international markets.

She is the author of Freedomville: The Story of a 21st Century Slave Revolt, The New Slave Narrative: The Battle over Representations of Contemporary Slavery (Columbia University Press, 2019), editor of Survivors of Slavery: Modern-Day Slave Narratives (Columbia University Press, 2014), and author of Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature (Ohio University Press, 2012).

She has provided expert testimony and evidence on the crisis in the Uyghur Region to the US, UK, EU and Australian governments. She has consulted for the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Office of Victims of Crime, and the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center.