Erin Kamler is an American composer, writer, musician and scholar who tells the stories of women. A Ph.D. candidate at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Erin’s research focuses on using the arts as a tool for political communication. Her dissertation project engages a study of the trafficking of women in Thailand and critiques the State Department-driven anti-trafficking movement through the lens of culture and feminist international relations. Conversationally fluent in the Thai language, Erin has conducted qualitative fieldwork with anti-trafficking NGOs, government actors, female migrants and trafficking survivors. Erin holds a Bachelor of Arts in music composition from Sarah Lawrence College, a Masters in Public Diplomacy and a Masters in Communication Arts from USC’s Annenberg School. She is a recipient of the USC Graduate School’s prestigious Research Enhancement Fellowship for her dissertation project, “From Victim to Subject: Dramatization as Research in Thailand’s Anti-Trafficking Movement” and currently serves as a New Directions Scholar at the USC Center for Feminist Research. In 2014-15 she will work as an Affiliated Research at Chiang Mai University, examining the trafficking of Kachin women as “forced brides” along the Burma-China border. Erin is married to the American theater producer Rick Culbertson. She divides her time between Los Angeles and Thailand.

To learn more about her work visit www.erinkamler.net.