Laura Murphy is a professor at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr-Ryan Centre for Human Rights. She has led a series of research reports documenting the systematic use of forced labour in China's Uyghur region, exposing risks to the integrity of international supply chains—including for solar modules, clothing, cars, electronics, chemicals and critical minerals. She also served as a policy adviser to the US Department of Homeland Security on secondment.
In August 2024 Sheffield Hallam University told Murphy it would not publish her team's research on Uyghur forced labour in the critical-minerals sector, and was prepared to return hundreds of thousands of pounds in grant funding rather than have the work bear the Helena Kennedy Centre's imprimatur. Freedom-of-information requests later revealed that the university had been visited by Chinese security-service agents at its Beijing student-recruitment office, who demanded an end to the research and instructed university staff to share details of upcoming conversations with British colleagues. Internal university documents showed administrators weighed the Chinese-student market—recruitment communications, licence renewals, degree recognition and potential boycotts—far more extensively than Murphy's academic freedom. The university subsequently allowed Murphy to continue her research after she threatened legal action, backed by a grant from Law for Change.
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already paid may disregard this cookie).