Logan Knight

Logan (Kai) Shinkai Knight (she/her) comes to KU from The Ohio State University College of Social Work. She completed a PhD in social work in May 2024, and an MSW in May 2018.

Kai’s critical scholarship on human trafficking prioritizes survivor leadership and expertise. Through participatory and critical qualitative methodologies, her research aims to be a platform for these oppressed and vulnerable groups to be powerful authors of their own knowledge and agents of change within the academic and wider community. All her work is motivated by the conviction that the greatest progress in addressing trafficking and systems of oppression is achieved only when diverse survivors are the ones in charge of informing, directing, evaluating and applying research.

Kai’s current community-engaged research focuses on strategies for promoting resilience in people who have experienced human trafficking. Her recent work includes collaborating with survivors of sex trafficking to develop a grounded theory of resilience in order to create resilience interventions that are rooted and grounded in survivors’ experiences and aspirations. In view of the extensive involvement of faith-based communities in anti-trafficking efforts locally and globally, Kai’s research also examines the anti-trafficking discourses and practices of faith-based communities. She aims at strengthening alliances between social work and faith-based communities to multiply resources for addressing trafficking, and so that social work can assist faith-based communities to integrate survivor-led, survivor-first and anti-oppressive perspectives into their efforts.

Her teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate and graduate social work courses in at Ohio State University. Kai has practice experience with survivors of human trafficking and other forms of interpersonal violence.