For the second year in a row, Stephan Sonnenberg, Clinical Supervising Attorney in the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic has teamed up with Prof. Katherine Jolluck (History), and Prof. Suzanne Lippert and Rebecca Walker, (both from the Emergency Medicine Department at the Stanford Medical School), to teach a multidisciplinary course on human trafficking. The course is open to graduate and undergraduate students, and is cross-listed as a course open to Law Students as well. The course is designed to expose students to a range of professional approaches to the problem of human trafficking, emphasizing the need to look for new and better approaches to combat the estimated $32 billion global “market” for human trafficking. Each member of the team utilizes different teaching methods, such as inquiry-based learning and case studies, to encourage students to actively engage with the structure and content of their course material. The cases prompt students to co-define their own learning priorities as they develop a deeper understanding of the various forms of human trafficking.

The course also includes an optional service learning component for additional credit. Students enrolled in the service learning component translate their learning in the course into practice by means of project work with a local Bay Area service provider or trafficking activist. Service learners this year are helping drive preparations in the Bay Area for what some analysts predict will be a spike in sex- and labor trafficking to coincide with the 2016 Super Bowl, which will be held less than 14 miles from Stanford’s campus at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

For a more informational discussion of the course, please visit:

https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/teaching-talk/studying-human-trafficking-through-medical-legal-and-historical-lenses