Current Research Projects
“I’m on Holiday”: Hook-up Culture Abroad
Current status: Qualitative data is collected. Interviews need to be transcribed and analyzed. This project needs a review of literature, data analysis, and writing.
Research Affiliate: Lynnette Coto
“Its Almost Like You Are the Colonist”: A Critical Analysis of Broad City’s White Feminism
Current status: This is a qualitative content analysis project. This project is at the writing stage, needs an updated literature review, and potentially some more data analysis.
Research Affiliate: Lynnette Coto
“He Really Wanted His Bottom Stretched Out”: Examining the Kink of Pegging
Current status:This is a qualitative project with in-depth interviews with 22 individuals who engage in the kink of pegging. Interviews included questions about gender, sexuality, and kink. Data collection is completed, and data analysis is ongoing.
Research Affiliate: Lynnette Coto
“People See You as a Dollar Sign”: A Qualitative Study in Division-I College Football
Current status: This is a qualitative research project of in-depth interviews with 23 Division I College Football Student Athletes. The first part of the interview asks questions about college hookup culture. The second part of the interview asks questions about student athlete exploitation, and inequities. Data collection is completed, and data analysis is ongoing.
Research Affiliate: Lynnette Coto
Do Leisure and Perceived Leisure Constraints Differ Across Types of Mass Murder?
Current status: Data collection is in progress. Forensic documents from a large sample of different cases of mass murder will be analyzed to determine the potential of leisure relevance, including perceptions of leisure constraints, that factor into target selection and homicide planning. It is hypothesized that the relevance and salience of leisure will differ across basic categories of mass murder.
Research Affiliate: DJ Williams
Consensually Non-Monogamous People’s Experiences of Stigma, Discrimination, and Resilience
Current status: This project encompasses several academic papers in-progress which analyze two different large datasets. Two quantitative manuscripts are currently in peer review. A large set of write-in short answer responses discussing experiences of discrimination are currently being analyzed qualitatively. Looking for research assistants for the qualitative analysis project (and eventual paper). Potential opportunities also exist for motivated interns to spearhead their own projects, with supervision and mentorship, using these quantitative and/or qualitative datasets.
Research Affiliate: Ryan Witherspoon
Untitled Large Consensual Non-Monogamy Study
Current status: This project is a collaboration between the researcher and the creators of a popular polyamory podcast that wishes to use its large audience to help spur sex-positive academic research on polyamory. The study is currently in the design phase. We are not looking for research assistants yet but may be in a few months.
Research Affiliate: Ryan Witherspoon
Awakenings: A Study of the Lives and Experiences of Erotic Hypnosis Practitioners
Current Status: This project explores the experiences of people interested in erotic hypnosis, mind control, and brainwashing fetishism, with an emphasis on attitudes about consent, diversity and intersectionality, life challenges, community, and online spaces. 45+ qualitative interviews have been conducted already, and additional interviewees are still being recruited while transcribing past interviews.
Research Affiliate: Sam Hughes
Impacts of COVID-19 and Related Prevention Measures on Sex Life
Current Status: The purpose of this project is to investigate the impacts of COVID-19 and related prevention measures (e.g., lockdowns, quarantine, social distancing) on sex life as well as to examine the cognitive and behavioral coping strategies and perceptions of sex as leisure. The online survey data collection is ongoing.
Research Affiliate: Liza Berdychevsky
Sexual Well-being and Tailored Sexual Health Education for Older Adults
Current Status: Based on the qualitative findings, we are currently developing and piloting the survey instrument for the quantitative phase of the project. The goal of this project is to establish older adults’ needs for sexual health education, to investigate their willingness to adopt technology tools to receive such education, and to develop innovative Internet-based sexual health education messages tailored to their needs.
Research Affiliate: Liza Berdychevsky
Sex, Health, and Well-being in Leisure Travel: Toward Designing Sexual Health Education
Current Status: The purpose of this project is to explore the necessity of sexual health education for tourists and to identify the characteristics of potentially successful sexual health messages. This project implements a sequential qualitative-to-quantitative mixed methods design. The qualitative phase with in-depth interviews and focus groups has been concluded and it served as a basis for developing and validating a survey instrument measuring views and preferences regarding sexual health education for tourists. The quantitative data collection is currently ongoing.
Research Affiliate: Liza Berdychevsky
Kink Identity and Sexuality Study (KISS Project)
Current Status: We will be launching a new study in early 2021 that will attempt to measure differences along several dimensions of kink identity and sexuality. Later in 2021, we will be launching a larger study of kink identity development that will involve both survey and interview methods in a mixed-methods design. Looking for research assistants.
Research Affiliate: Richard Sprott
Kink Health Survey
Current Status: In the first half of 2021, we will be launching our International Kink Health Survey, which will examine possible health disparities, healthcare access and utilization, and the health status of kink-involved people. Looking for research assistants, especially to help with outreach, dissemination, and participant recruitment.
Research Affiliate: Richard Sprott
Gay sexual subcultures and social identities: kink, communities and digital technologies
Current Status: Final stages of monograph submission.
Research affiliate: Liam Wignall
Impact of COVID-19 on sexual wellbeing in UK young adults
Current Status: Two manuscripts under review. Final data analysis for manuscript three.
Research Affiliate: Liam Wignall
The Kinky Brat: Speak Pleasure to Power
Current Status: In progress. This project draws on BDSM world-making to centre the kinky brat as a methodological and epistemological figure. Positioning brat play as both literal and analogous praxis, I consider what kind of knowledge is produced by the pleasure of naughtiness, both in erotic role-playing and in academic analysis.
Research Affiliate: Ummni Khan
Queer Lens in Focus: A photovoice project with LGBTQ+ Refugees and Asylum Seekers living in Athens, Greece
Current Status: This research uses ethnography and photovoice methodology to highlight the experiences of 14 displaced people living in Athens Greece that identify as LGBTQ+. Their photographs and testimonies illuminate the strength and resilience of LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers as they negotiate identity, express hope for a better life, identify needed resources, and grapple with physical, emotional, and symbolic notions of home through photography. The project is in the analysis and write-up stage.
Research Affiliate: Moshoula Capous-Desyllas