Researchers

Eric Chambers is currently adjunct professor of linguistics at the State University of New York at New Paltz.  His dissertation focused on language use among gay-identified members of an online erotic hypnosis messageboard.  He has been published in the Journal of Language and Sexuality, and in a forthcoming volume of digital orality.  He is currently working on two larger projects: a linguistic treatment of erotic hypnosis trances, and its intersections with larger ideologies and language patterns of clinical hypnosis; and a cross-linguistic typology of the emergence of nonbinary pronouns and strategies in traditionally-gendered languages. He is also a self-professed "advanced beginner" bookbinder.

Georgie (she/they) is a researcher and somatic sexuality practitioner and educator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They joined CPS as a research and education intern for CPS in 2020. Georgie earned an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology from the University of St Andrews, where they were honored with the Research Methods in Psychology award for graduating top of their class. Their dissertation and further research explores stigma, identification, and wellbeing in the BDSM Community. Over the past two years, Georgie has been working as a somatic sexuality practitioner and educator alongside working with adults with cognitive and physical disabilities, and is passionate about the intersection of disability and sex. She is resident coach for Voluptas Events in Edinburgh and group leader for the Somatica Institute in San Francisco.

Tess Allen is a PhD Candidate and Assistant Teacher in Philosophy at the University of Bristol, UK. Her PhD research aims at constructing a theory of embodiment that centres around the body, intersubjectivity and freedom of agents. This framework is then applied to feminist debates concerning feminine identity and sexuality; specifically, the debate surrounding BDSM practitioners is examined with a particular interest in the silencing of these practitioners by sex-negative scholars and the claims of BDSM perpetuating female objectification. Tess is also the current Subject Editor in Philosophy for the Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching (BILT) Journal.

Dr. Marina Basson is a specialist in Relational Diversity with over a decade of experience as a Wellness Intimacy Coach. Dr. Basson is known for facilitating dynamic group workshops focused on developing skills in sexual intimacy, conscious communication, and conflict resolution — both in personal and professional settings. She also leads corporate team-building sessions designed to foster connection, empathy, and effective collaboration. Additionally, Dr. Basson offers a popular online short course for those interested in exploring Wellness Intimacy Coaching, whether to enhance their existing practice or to embark on a new career path in this growing field. She is currently busy with international research between Canada and South Africa exploring the changing trajectory of Swinging (CNM).

Eli Benjamin is a philosophy Ph.D. student at Temple University, focusing on ethics, moral psychology, Kantian philosophy, and the philosophy of sex. Prior to joining Temple, he completed his M.A. and B.A. degrees in the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Eli is interested in the nature of autonomy and agency, and how individuals can confidently align their actions with their will. Additionally, he has a scholarly-activist interest in sexual ethics, sharing his insights on consent and the fundamental role of consent-receivers in making consent valid with relevant communities, and incorporating their experiences into his work.

Dr. Liza Berdychevsky is an associate professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She graduated from the University of Florida with a Ph.D. in Health and Human Performance and from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, with an M.B.A. in Business Administration. Dr. Berdychevsky’s research revolves at the nexus of sexual health and wellbeing in leisure and tourism contexts, adopting a gender-sensitive and a life course-grounded approach. She uses a variety of methodologies in her projects, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Overall, Dr. Berdychevsky’s research contributes to a deeper understanding of the issues associated with sexual health and violence and offers directions for health education programs and prevention and intervention methods. She has published in several leading academic leisure, tourism, and sexuality journals and presented her work at numerous national and international congresses. She serves as a consulting editor on The Journal of Sex Research, an associate editor on Leisure Sciences, and an editorial advisory board member on the Annals of Leisure Research.

Dr. Moshoula Capous-Desyllas (she/her) is Professor in the Sociology Department at California State University Northridge. She is an arts-based researcher committed to participating in anti-oppressive and decolonizing research practices, as well as engaging in social justice issues related to gender, sex, and sexuality through art. Her passion lies in highlighting the voices of marginalized communities through the use of art as a form of activism, empowerment, and social change. Moshoula has facilitated numerous community-based, photovoice research projects within various communities and collectives, including sex workers, LGBTQ former foster care youth, and LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers living in Athens, Greece.

Daniel Copulsky (he or they) is an instructor, researcher, and Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He researches sexual identity, asexuality, and nonmonogamy, with a focus on identity labels and identity development. He speaks regularly at colleges and conferences, and he has been quoted as an expert on sexual identity in Cosmo and Psychology Today.

Lynnette Priscilla Coto (she/her) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a Ph.D. in Sociology and graduate minors in Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies; and African and African American Studies. Dr. Coto also earned a Master of Arts in Applied Sociology with a graduate concentration in Domestic Violence and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with minors in Sociology; and Crime, Law, and Deviance from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Coto’s research focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race. For her dissertation, she conducted qualitative studies on three distinct sexual subcultures- college football student-athlete hookup culture, the kink of pegging, and hookup culture at specialty gyms. She is a qualitative methodologist specializing in in-depth interviewing, ethnography, online ethnography, focus groups, participant observation, and content analysis.

Penny Harvey, PhD, currently serves as an Associate Professor of Human Sexuality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Their research focuses primarily on pleasure and gender, as well as contemporary families. However, they have contributed to a diverse array of topics including gender, pornography, trans health, LGBTQ family building, and youth sexuality development. Their scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Gender and Research, Archives of Sexuality, and Sexologies. Currently, Penny is engaged in projects through the Pleasure Study lab, where they conduct interviews exploring sexual pleasure experiences. Additionally, they are involved in the Contemporary Family Conceptions collective, leading a longitudinal study on contemporary families. Penny is available for interviews on any of these multifaceted topics.

Ethan Haymovitz is a doctoral level social worker have a professional interest in the Adult Baby/Diaper Lover (ABDL) community and identity. His work aims to understand and articulate the nuances of this identity through academic research and community engagement. He studies aspects such as little space, regression, and the potential mental health benefits associated with a positive ABDL identity. Currently, he is involved in research examining the potential links between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and ABDL. He runs an online peer support group for gay men who identify as ABDL. His academic background includes degrees from Vassar, with further studies in social work at Columbia University, and coursework at Cornell University and Millersville University.

Dr. Dave Holmes is Professor and University Research Chair in Forensic Nursing. Distinguished Leader, American Academy of Nursing. After completing his B.Sc. (Ottawa, 1991), M.Sc. (Montreal, 1998) and Ph.D. (Montreal, 2002) in Nursing, Professor Holmes completed a CIHR post-doctoral fellowship in Health Care, Technology and Place at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Social Work (2003). To date, Dr. Holmes received funding, as principal investigator, from CIHR and SSHRC, to conduct his research program on risk management in the fields of Public Health and Forensic Nursing. With regard to sexuality, he has conducted research is the fields of barebacking, BDSM, and public sex. Most of his work, comments, essays, analyses and research are based on the poststructuralist works of Deleuze & Guattari and Michel Foucault. His works have been published in top-tier journals in nursing, criminology, sociology and medicine. He was appointed as Honorary Visiting Professor in Australia, Indonesia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Sam Hughes is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Emporia State University in Kansas. His research focuses on the lives and experiences of people into kink, BDSM, and sexual fetishism. His work also explores the relationship between sexuality, mental health outcomes, attitudes,  institutions, social context, and intersectionality. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative methods, his work has appeared in peer-reviewed academic research journals, and has also been covered in Vice, Psychology Today, Insider, and Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast.

Dr. Corey W. Johnson is the Karla Henderson Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University and a leading scholar in the fields of leisure, sexual identity, gender expression, and digital equity. He is also a qualitative research methodologist and started the first Ph.D. in Qualitative Research in North America and developed and manages a certificate program. His primary research focuses the nuanced intersections of sexual identity, gender, race and class, in the cultural context of leisure, with a focus on creating inclusive and equitable environments. Currently, he leads the Collaboratory on Digital Equity Research (CODER), where he examines digital harms and advocates for equitable digital practices. His work has earned him numerous accolades, including The Academy of Leisure Sciences Distinguished Researcher Award, the UGA MLK Jr. Achieving the Dream Award, the University of Waterloo’s Equity and Inclusion Award, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Community Connection Award, 2SLGBTQ+ Thriving on Campus, Nominee, and the Innovation in Teaching Award from The Academy of Leisure Sciences.

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Dr. Ummni Khan (she/her) is an Associate Professor in Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University (unceded territories of the Algonquin nation, Ottawa, Canada).  She researches the socio-legal construction of deviant sexuality, with a focus on kink, sex work, and representations of hardcore eroticism.  Drawing on an intersectional lens,  Dr. Khan asks, how can we reframe deviancy through an epistemology of pleasure?  Her work can be found in a variety of peer-reviewed and popular venues including The Canadian Journal of Law and Society; The University of Toronto Law Journal; Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology; Feral Feminisms; and Ryerson’s Centre for Free Expression Blog.

Rob Matchett is a graduate student in the department of sociology at Louisiana State University. Matchett’s research is centered around sociology of gender & sexuality, embodiment, health & mental health, and sociological social psychology. Matchett was the recipient of the 2015 Ray Coppler Disability Awareness Award and 2018 Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Matchett’s current research explores the lived experiences of individuals who participate in pup play.

Anna Mense is a PhD candidate and a lecturer in Philosophy at the Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany. In her research, she is currently focused on the Philosophy of Love and Sexualities. Anna graduated in Philosophy, English, and German as a teaching profession with a thesis on the question “Is there an Aesthetic Pleasure?”, in 2014. She was committed to university policy for many years and she founded the undergraduate conference Dia:logos in 2015. Her PhD project “On the Capability to Love” aims at understanding the role that so-called deficient loving has for the concept of love. She is working on an integrative concept of love that is capable of explaining how far loving always implies both options of success and deficit as well as it demands the cultivation of personal capabilities. In her second research project “Sex Speech. Problems of Tabooed Talk and the Potential of a Sex-positive Discourse and Sex-positive Spaces”, Anna analyses the role that language and concepts have for different aspects of sexualities, sexual experiences, and sexual identity. She locates this matter within the examination of a sex-negative socio-political climate and an emerging sex-positive subculture.

Vanessa R. Panfil, PhD, is an academic and advocate. Her research and activism focus on LGBTQ people, reproductive justice, democratic participation, harm reduction, equity, and accessibility. She is the author of several books, including Sex-Positive Criminology with Aimee Wodda.

Emily E. Prior is the Executive Director for the Center for Positive Sexuality. Since 1996 she has been teaching formal and informal classes about a variety of sexuality-related topics including Gender, Deviance, Relationships and Family, and Feminism. She is an adjunct professor at several colleges and universities, has over a dozen publications, and presents at conferences around the U.S. She is frequently interviewed about her research, the Center, and positive sexuality in general. She also won the Vern Bullough Award for research. Her research focuses on the intersections of identity, feminism, deviance, leisure, gender, and sexuality.

Anthony Redgrave (he/him) is a founding board member of the Trans Doe Task Force, and organization that seeks to resolve cases of missing, murdered, and unidentified members of the queer community, especially Transgender individuals.  His dissertation focused on determining barriers to communication between members of key stakeholder groups affected by the use of forensic genetic genealogy in order to develop standards of practice that support its use to resolve cold cases of fatal violence towards marginalized victims.  He is also the founder and instructor of FG4LE (Forensic Genealogy for Law Enforcement), an online education program designed to teach forensic genetic genealogy to law enforcement professionals.  He has assisted in the resolution of dozens of cold cases since 2018 and presents frequently at universities and academic conferences on the topics of forensic genetic genealogy and the reduction of postmortem violence towards Transgender individuals.

Dr. Brad Sagarin is a professor of social and evolutionary psychology at Northern Illinois University and the head of the Science of BDSM Research Team (www.scienceofbdsm.com). Brad’s current research focuses on consensual BDSM, social influence, and statistics. Brad has been published in a variety of scholarly journals, has given radio and podcast interviews, has consulted for radio and television programs, and has delivered invited lectures to academic and non-academic organizations. His research has been cited in newspapers and magazines, including The Economist and New Scientist. He holds Doctorate and Master’s degrees in Social Psychology from Arizona State University, and a Baccalaureate degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Elisabeth “Eli” Sheff is the foremost academic expert on polyamorous families with children. Sheff’s first book, The Polyamorists Next Door (2014), details her 15-year study of poly families with kids and was just reprinted in paperback, and her second book Stories from the Polycule (2015) is an edited anthology of writings by poly folks. When Someone You Love is Polyamorous (2016) is Sheff’s shortest book that guides family members and significant others who are trying to understand a polyamorous loved one. Dr. Sheff is currently in her fourth wave of data collection for her 20+ year study of polyamorous families with children.

Dr. Liam Wignall is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Brighton. He specialises in research on kink/BDSM, looking at the impact of internet and community engagement on identity formation. His book, Kinky in the Digital Age, provides explores how kinky gay and bisexual men navigate the kink in contemporary times with an in-depth analysis of the pup play subculture. He also explores these themes in his co-edited book, The Power of BDSM. He is co-editor for the journal Psychology & Sexuality, and the Oxford University Press book series Sexuality, Identity, and Society.

D J Williams is the former Director of Research for the Center for Positive Sexuality and a social and behavioral scientist at Idaho State University. He completed doctoral and postdoctoral studies at the University of Alberta (Canada), and his scholarship intersects leisure science, forensic behavioral science, criminology, and sexology. D J is a leading international expert on deviance as leisure experience, and he has been a consultant and/or expert witness on several high-profile forensic cases involving sexuality and actual or potential violence. His research has been published in numerous academic books and journals, including Journal of Sexual Medicine, Homicide Studies, Deviant Behavior, Journal of Forensic Sciences, Leisure Sciences, and Critical Criminology.

Aimee Wodda, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Law and Society at Pacific University. Her research focuses on the intersection between institutionalized forms of harm and gender, sexuality, and the law. She is the author of Sex-Positive Criminology with Vanessa R. Panfil.