Revd Dr Carrie Pemberton Ford

Carrie is the Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Applied Research in Human Trafficking  an internationally recognized research network on Human Trafficking which draws on academic colleagues from not only the University of Cambridge but associate Universities, and Research Institutes alongside an extensive international network of academics, stakeholders, government, enforcement personnel, lawyers,  international development practitioners, policy makers, businesses and  third sector organisations.

CCARHT runs out a yearly symposium for professionals, counter trafficking practitioners and Academics on issues of thematic interest – this last year the challenges of the Several Rs of Trafficking, were tackled, with powerful inputs from some of the leading specialists  working on the challenges to recovery for those trafficked,  the mechanisms of recruitment and exploitation, the grooming and exploitation of Children in institutional care (world wide – intersecting with the work of JK Rowling’s Lumos foundation) and on the final day addressing the horrors of the trade driving the Removal of organs – with devastating inputs from Romania, Moldova and India. The summer of 2020 sees this annual CCARHT Summer Symposium convened at the Judge Business School in the heart of the University, exploring the contribution and challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals and their potential impact on Human Trafficking, Modern Slavery and Contemporary Chattelage.

Carrie is a practical liberation-based feminist theologian and Africanist, her PhD focussed on the Post Colonial discourse of Sub Saharan African female theologians, and their dialogue with the west, published in The Circle of African Women in Dialogue with the West. Brill 2002.  She was the co-founder of the Theological Institute in D.R.Congo established in Bunia, Ituri D.R.Congo in 1987 for the development of Anglican clergy, which survived the post Rwandan genocides and femicidal militia activities, and is now incorporated into the first Anglican University in Ituri. It has educated the majority of all the current episcopacy in D.R.Congo proof of the concept of building educational capacity and resource nationally.  A former Women’s National Commissioner responsible for the incorporation of the BAME communities into Public Life, and Chair of the Violence against Women working group, Carrie has also had time as a Church minister being the start up Minister for the Local Ecumenical Project Churches together in Cambourne, and the Religious Manager of a Home Office detention facility.  Carrie has been working in the area of migration, gender studies, NGO capacity building in advocacy, first responder work, policing response, VAW, and Human Trafficking impacts for over fifteen years.

Carrie enjoyed the benefits of a  United Nations Institute Training and Research (UNITAR) fellowship in 2018, working with UNITAR Geneva to develop funding for projects addressing Gender Based Violence, Conflict Resolution and Peace Building capacities for vulnerable States, and Gender Mainstreaming across CSOs and Public agencies addressing these issues. Carrie advised at a High Level NATO panel convened to address the ‘migrant crisis’ of 2013 – 2015, and continues her research and concern for greater integration and raised human consciousness about global human movement, and the human mandate to seek out  and the Christian vocation to provide hospitality and safety.  Carrie is a visiting lecturer and Professor at the American University in Bucharest, and the University of Palermo, and has a number of scholarships available for those seeking to participate in research programmes which she curates.

She welcomes supervision and lecturing opportunities in any of her areas of expertise, and looks forward to building the contribution of Ethics in Public Life, into the wider offer of the work which MBIT makes to both the Theological Federation and the wider international Catholic church, in its tasks of social responsibility, social justice and peaceable relations in creation.  She is currently working on a book on A Personal Offence? The Business of Trafficking, Ethical Rupture and Economic Sabotage.

Do be in touch Carrie@ccarht.org
Further information on the work of CCARHT:  www.ccarht.org