Bright Lights and Windows: A look behind the curtain of Dutch sex work
23rd Annual De Vries - VanderKooy Memorial Lecture

The Red Light District of Amsterdam speaks to our imagination as a symbol of Dutch liberalism, pragmatism, and the normalization of the human experience. Bernice Severin will discuss how, behind the neon lights, hides a deeper, darker culture of exploitation. The audience will come away with an understanding of the history, culture, policy, and economics of Dutch prostitution, as it has expanded beyond canal-front windows to sex farms and storage rooms. Bernice Severin is a social worker with Veilig Thuis (Safe At Home), an advice center and hotline for domestic and child abuse. From 2011 to 2017 she worked for the Amsterdam Coordination Center Against Human Trafficking.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the De Vries - VanderKooy endowment, School of Social Work, Institute for the Humanities, Rackham Graduate School, International Institute, Center for European Studies, Netherlands Embassy, Washington D.C., Netherlands America University League