Dr. Kate Hausbeck Korgan

Kate is a feminist social theorist who studies neoliberal commerce, market-based sex industries, sex worker business practices and entrepreneurship, as well as issues of technology, identity, and culture. Kate is co-author of The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland (Routledge, 2010), along with numerous other articles and chapters on sexual commerce. Kate’s current research is on the business practices and culture of women who labor as independent, U.S.-based, online escorts. She is the founder of The Erotic Entrepreneurs Project, a collaborative and interdisciplinary study of independent online escorts, courtesans, or companions in the expansive realm of internet-based intimacy and e-commerce. In our gig economy, there is a growing group of laborers capitalizing on the vast opportunities of cyberspace to build their own businesses, including women doing so as top-end, independent escorts. The erotic entrepreneurs research project documents this world of intimate exchange, and the women at the helm of this online, adult commercial space.