Draft:Olivia Snow

Olivia Snow, also known as Mistress Snow, is an academic and dominatrix who specializes in critical sex work studies. She is an internationally recognized expert in labor studies, algorithmic surveillance, and whorephobia.

Education
Snow enrolled at New York University as a music major in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development before transferring to the College of Arts and Science, where she completed her B.A. in English and American Literature. For her graduate studies, Snow attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English. She worked as a dominatrix to afford her education in college and graduate school.

Career
Snow began working at the City University of New York as an Adjunct Lecturer of English and was promoted to Adjunct Assistant Professor of English upon the completion of her PhD. In 2019, she also resumed working as a dominatrix in a New York City BDSM dungeon to complement her low adjunct wages. After she disclosed her sex work, one of Snow’s dissertation committee members withdrew her letters of recommendation, effectively ending her career in literary studies.

Snow published the essay “I Told My Mentor I Wad a Dominatrix” in The Chronicle of Higher Education to critical acclaim in December 2019. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Snow shifted her research focus from literature to critical sex work studies and information science. She was appointed alongside J. Khadijah Abdurahman as Tech Impact Network Research Fellow at the AI Now Institute in 2021 and the University of California, Los Angeles' Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2) in 2022. Snow is currently a Visiting Assistant Researcher in the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA and a house Domme at Pandora's Box (BDSM).

Since 2022, Snow has written on sex work and technology for numerous publications including WIRED, VICE, and Jezebel, among others. She has appeared as an expert on dozens of podcasts and radio shows including NPR's Embodied Radio Show and Bridget Todd's There Are No Girls on the Internet, and she was a panelist at the Free Speech Coalition's annual summit at the XBIZ LA show in 2023. Snow's research has been featured in various media outlets including Forbes, The Daily Dot, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, and others.

Select publications
Snow, Olivia (27 June 2022). "Are You Ready to be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker?" WIRED.

Snow, Olivia (7 December 2022). "‘Magic Avatar’ App Lensa Generated Nudes From My Childhood Photos." WIRED.

Snow, Olivia (26 December 2022). "Sex Workers Have Been Banned From Airbnb for Years. Will You Be Next?" The Nation.