Dr Annalisa Martin she/her

Annalisa Martin is a historian of gender, sexuality, welfare and crime, with a focus on modern Germany.

Her new project is a microhistory of a West German workhouse (~1945-1969). The institution held individuals sentenced under minor begging, vagrancy and prostitution offences for a period of up to four years. The project, undertaken as part of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, foregrounds inmate experiences of the workhouse and places particular attention on questions of gender
and sexuality.

Annalisa Martin’s previous research has focussed on histories of commercial sex in West Germany. She has considered the specific role of the morals police in the policing of prostitution, the crimes of pimping and procuring and the impact of partial criminalisation on the lives of those who sold sex.

Keywords: incarceration, sex work, policing

Recent Publications: 

Martin, Annalisa, ‘Prostitution as Profession: Histories of “Work-Shy” Labour in a Welfare State, West Germany between 1949 and 1974’, Contemporary European History, 2025, 1–18.

Martin, Annalisa, ‘Incarceration as Welfare: Transgressive Female Sexuality and the Workhouse in West Germany, 1950–1969’, Gender & History, 2024, 1468-0424.12812.

Martin, Annalisa, ‘“The Chronicle Must Tell How It Once Was”: Commercial Sex and Pimping in the Chronicle of Hamburg’s Postwar Vice Police’, German History, 41/2 (2023), 252–78.