Interdisciplinary study of human sexuality, gender, and sex: this research will provide new understandings of gender/sex and sexual diversity that are more accurate, empirical, and just in promoting equity and helping us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.
Canada Research Chair in Gender/Sex and Sexual Diversity
Tier 1
Former
Better and socially just
understandings of gender
and sexuality
Dr. Sari van Anders is a leader in feminist and queer science, and sex research. Her research program seeks to meet the challenge of better understanding gender/sex and sexual diversity. Her award-winning research spans across natural, social and health sciences, to the arts, and humanities.
Having led and established the new field of “social neuroendocrinology,” Dr. van Anders’ groundbreaking research is working towards several objectives. Her sexual configurations theory is one of the most advanced models of gender/sex and sexual diversity available and may become a new global standard for education in the development of a new guidebook for everyday use. Her research also explores and informs our understanding of the impacts of gender on sex, and the dividing lines and interplay between them. Additionally, Dr. van Anders’s research seeks to understand the impact of gender roles on sexual desire among diverse communities. As well as establishing new measurement approaches that ensure equity, her work helps to test discriminatory and inclusive educational outcomes across gender/sex to pinpoint inequities and promising avenues.
Dr. van Anders has also investigated how gendered experiences modulate testosterone, how testosterone responds when a person marginalizes others, and why certain sexual phenomena change a person’s hormones and immunity. Her research contributes to our understanding of sexual phenomena like orgasm, fantasy, desire, and pornography — as well as larger related constructs like gender and sexual diversity.