Gender & Sexuality Research Group

How does sex, gender and sex/gender inform our identity?
What is the relationship between our body and our sense of self?

Ongoing Research

Physical Affirmation – the Role of Expectations

Physical affirmation procedures facilitate the embodiment of one’s ‘self’, one’s identity. To what degree does successful gender affirmation require more than a medically successful intervention? As the number of individuals identifying as transgender has increased so too has individuals’ ability to access procedures to physically affirm their gender… read more.

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The Experience of Asexuality

The number of individuals identifying as asexual has risen significantly in recent years, especially among young women. We don’t know whether this represents a shift in reporting or an increase in individuals not feeling sexual attraction. Nor is it clear to what extent asexuality… read more.

Participate in the Survey

Identity & Quality of Life

What lets us know if we are doing ok, especially when things are intense or unpredictable? Our sense of well-being, or quality of life (QoL), is an important component of our experience. Because QoL is highly subjective, individuals may vary… read more.

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Sexuality Study

To social scientists, gender is connected to an individual’s sex mostly through socially constructed links. To natural scientists, it is partially that and partially a flexible behavioral trait that evolved because it facilitated… read more.

Participate in the Survey

The Lab

Identity, is it something that we build and develop, or does it exist within us, something to uncover or become aware of it?

Our current research explores how sex, gender and sex/gender inform one’s identity or sense of self, and how that sense of self shapes and is shaped by one’s relationship with their body. Our ongoing studies incorporate quantitative and qualitative methods, integrating the strengths of the natural and social sciences.

Identity is thought to be a relatively stable or long-lasting sense of ourselves. It is multifaceted and seems linked to various aspects such as our age, race, sex, gender, social status, values, etc. The importance and impact of our identity is especially visible when one looks at the experience of the LGBTQ community – where the benefit from naming and aligning to one’s ‘true’ self is so potent that it is the path to health and happiness, even when it places one in danger.

How does our experience and our sense of our experience influence our identity? And how does our identity influence our experience?