Alumni

Sexual wellbeing refers to a positive mental state that involves feeling respected, supported, safe, comfortable, confident and capable in relation to sex and sexuality. Sexual wellbeing stems from the accumulation of advantageous and disadvantageous experiences within socio-structural contexts. It is integral to consensual, healthy and pleasurable sexual experiences and relationships. Despite its importance to a person’s overall wellbeing, we lack knowledge on how the components of sexual wellbeing shape—and are shaped by—different sexual histories. In my PhD I am carrying out a qualitative evidence synthesis, repeat biographical interviews, and a diary study to explore young people’s (16-24) sexual wellbeing. I am interested in (1) documenting the lived sexuality-related experiences shaping youth sexual wellbeing; (2) exploring what developmental experiences strengthen, sustain or detract from sexual wellbeing; and (3) charting what young people feel they require to support their sexual wellbeing.

Today, in western countries, sexuality represents one of the many battlegrounds and terrain of contention with respect to different visions of a ‘just’ world. For decades, Italy’s anti-gender movements have led a crusade against so-called ‘gender ideology’ in various public arenas: LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive health, and education, especially concerning sex education in schools. Scholars have largely focused on the political narratives of these groups, their repertoires of action as well as in comparison with LGBTQIA+ movements during manifestations and protests. However, many of these research study the phenomenon from afar, paying less attention to what happens ‘behind the scenes’, what is the cultural production within these contexts, how the political discourse of sexuality is created and how individuals negotiate their participation. This contribution will consider sexuality as composed by three fundamental elements: desire, identity and practice. These three analytical dimensions of sexuality will be explored through a cultural-affective approach. On the one hand, the present study aims at understanding the ideas and beliefs that drive protestors and investigating which material-discursive instruments and diapositives are employed in the construction of the political narrative of sexuality. On the other hand, it will explore how moods and reason interact in the process of creating a space and a collectivity of belonging as well as antagonism.

Previous research has showed that healthcare professionals working in forensic psychiatry confirm sexual health as an important part of care, but few discuss sexual issues with patients. Overall, research about sexuality and sexual health in relation to mental illness is scarce, and not least where patients in forensic psychiatry are concerned. The first study has explored how healthcare professionals experience having conversations about sexuality and sexual health with patients cared for in forensic psychiatry. Upcoming study will describe self-reported data for sexual health and sexual exposure from patients cared for in forensic psychiatry. The overarching aim is to gain knowledge about sexual health promotion in the context of forensic psychiatry, and to develop a structured tool for conversations about sexuality and sexual health in this setting. It is important to be able to ask and make it talkable – to be able to offer relevant care and support.

Past research has estimated that around 85.4% of sexual consent articles published before 2018 were conducted within university populations. This research focus, while necessary, neglects the wider population of sexually active people and fails to explore how conceptualisations and experiences of sexual consent can change across a person’s life. Participants (n = 579, 19-80 years old) took part in a survey, ten of which were selected to take part in follow-up interviews. The survey concerned participants’ consent experiences in three sexual events (i.e., their first sexual experience [E1], their first time with most recent partner [E2], and their most recent sexual experience [E3]), their attitudes towards sexual consent, and their sexual wellbeing. In interviews, participants expanded upon their conceptualisations of sexual consent, and how their consent experiences influenced their sexual wellbeing. Participants’ experiences of internal and external consent were significantly correlated for all three events. Linear modelling further revealed that specific facets of internal consent were important for explicit and verbal communication, however, the facets that were important changed from E1 and E2 to E3. Interview themes include learning from experiences, generational differences, and changing consent culture. Reconceptualising sexual consent as fluid and multi-dimensional could encourage more person-centred consent interventions that include the people neglected by current tertiary-based interventions.

Transgender women who underwent gonadectomy have lower serum testosterone concentrations than cisgender women. Studies suggest that when serum testosterone concentrations fall below female-specific ranges, cisgender may suffer from a range of symptoms such as depressed mood, fatigue, decreased energy and decreased sexual arousal or pleasure. There is uncertainty regarding the dosing and side effects of supplementation of testosterone in transgender women to the female physiological testosterone concentration. This open-label, single-arm feasibility study aimed to assess the feasibility of dosing testosterone to the cisgender female physiological range in transgender women. In addition, we explored changes in cardiovascular parameters, virilizing side effects and clinical symptoms including subjective and physiological sexual response. We included twelve transgender women who underwent vaginoplasty. Participants applied daily transdermal testosterone 2% gel (Tostran®).  Most participants required a dose of 0.07 mL (277 μg bio-available testosterone) or 0.09 mL (318 μg bio-available testosterone) to reach serum testosterone concentrations of 1.5-2.5 nmol/L. Continuing this dose, testosterone concentrations remained stable throughout the study. Changes in clinical outcomes were in the desired direction and side effects were mild. Effects on sexual response measured by vaginal photoplethysmography still need to be analyzed. The use of testosterone supplementation in transgender women seems feasible and safe in the short term. Although dosing requires personalized titration, stable testosterone levels can be established. A blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial is needed to study the clinical benefit.

Throughout the last century the concept of family has rapidly changed, resulting in new family compositions. Since the early 2000s various countries in Western Europe started to allow same-sex couples to legally adopt children. In this vein, a corpus of previous studies showed that children adopted by same-sex couples in Europe suffer from discrimination and stigma, pointing out how specific socialization patterns may attenuate the impact of these factors on adopted children with gay parents. The first aim of this study is to trace factors that may impact gay fathers’ socialization practices, such as parents’ minority stress. In this regard, the main hypotheses are that higher levels of minority stress in gay adoptive fathers predict the promotion of more defensive/hiding socialization practices with their children and that parents’ minority stress predicts poorer children’s adjustment. The second objective of this project is to analyze the relations between the perceived discrimination in adoptees with gay fathers and other dimensions, such as adopters’ socialization practices, adoptees’ adjustment, and the implementation of coping strategies put in place by adopted children. Expected results will inform the development of a short-term intervention for gay adoptive parents to support them in the transmission of effective strategies against possible stress and discrimination to their children.

Individuals with a sexual interest in children appear to be one of the most stigmatized groups in society. Stereotypes include that they are dangerous and in control of their sexual attraction to children. Importantly, stigmatization of this group seems to have profound consequences for the concerned individual as well as for society. For instance, the process of accepting negative stigmatizing attitudes about oneself (i.e., internalized pedonegativity) appears to go along with decreased wellbeing, increased feelings of shame, and potentially a higher risk of offending. Additionally, multiple studies have shown a reluctance of psychotherapists to treat those individuals. Thus, perceptions by professionals working with this group (i.e., psychologists, law-enforcement officers) as well as internalized negative views about themselves may influence the decision of individuals with a sexual interest in children to seek help. Hence, I want to study the effect of stigmatization on access and utilization of child sexual abuse prevention offers for individuals concerned about their sexual interest in children, as well as assess the effect of internalized pedonegativity on treatment outcome.

Asexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by low or absent sexual attraction. Asexuals often report a lack of interest in sexual stimuli (e.g., nudes, video clips displaying sexual interactions) and absent dyadic sexual desire, describing themselves as sex-neutral or sex-averse. However, despite such neutral and averse tendencies, asexuals have also reported diverse, more positive, and accepting experiences regarding sexual outlets. Indeed, little is known about asexuals’ cognitive and emotional appraisal of a wide range of sex stimuli. The information processing model posits that differential appraisal of sexual stimuli leads to differences in sexual response. As such, our online experiment aims to examine pre-attentional (occurs before conscious awareness) and subjective appraisal of sexual stimuli among asexual, demisexual, graysexual, and heterosexual cisgender women. By doing so, the study will be able to shed light on asexuals’ distinctive perceptions of sex and sexuality. It could also help explain the heterogeneity inside the asexual community and the variety of subjective sexual experiences among the heterosexual population by examining behavioral mechanisms and self-reported characteristics that may contribute to the differences in asexual self-identification.

Child sexual abuse is a violation of children’s rights, causing profound damage to victims and their families. Existing interventions primarily focus on reducing the risk of reoffending, often within correctional or forensic settings. There is currently a gap in preventive measures, particularly for individuals seeking help due to pedophilic interests. This project aims to test and evaluate a revised English version of the cognitive behavioral therapy Prevent It, a 9-week, 9 module therapist assisted program for anyone over 18 with concerns about their sexual urges involving children. The program is delivered anonymously online to decrease barriers to treatment and reach individuals at an earlier stage. Recruitment occurs primarily over darknet forums where child sexual abuse material is spread, allowing us to reach a large population of undetected, at-risk individuals and provide informed and effective care. The treatment is focused on decreasing sexual behaviors and urges towards children, utilizing strategies to help participants map out and manage potential risk situations. This pre-registered randomized controlled clinical trial compares Prevent It to a waitlist, with the inclusion of over 200 individuals.

My area of research focuses on the study of the Subjective Orgasm Experience (SOE), which refers to the evaluation and interpretation of orgasms from a psychological point of view, and the sexual satisfaction of people and couples who deviate from the traditional heterosexual schema. On the one hand, I conduct invariance studies to test whether different assessment instruments commonly used in psychosexual therapy can be applied to diverse populations, dyadic studies (especially with same-sex couples of men and women), as well as laboratory studies. The latter are carried out at the Human Sexuality Laboratory of the University of Granada (LabSex UGR), the only center in Spain where different dimensions of human sexuality are recorded, both objectively and subjectively.

The growing industry of intimate labour and services highlights the commodification and commercialization of intimacy, blurring the boundaries between intimacy and the economy in late capitalism. This study draws on post-Marxist theories of immaterial labor, which encompass emotional, bodily, and intimate labor, emphasizing the increasing importance of commercial exchanges involving relationships, emotions, and intimacy. Managing professional intimacy and negotiating intimate relations in professions such as care work, sex work, domestic work, healthcare,  aesthetic, cosmetic and massage services, entails gender-specific conflicts and challenges, related to the search for a balance between appropriate physical, sexual, and emotional closeness. Considering that intimate labor is highly feminized and characterized by inequalities based on class, ethnicity, and race, this mixed-method study, based in Slovenia, aims to examine the management of commodified (professional) intimacy through inter-sectoral comparison of various professions of intimate labour. Specifically, it focuses on the roles of gender and professionalism in negotiating intimate relationships in the workplace.

A wide array of unwanted sexual experiences (USEs), are linked to sexual and psychological problems but are not explicitly included in many sexual abuse surveys. Empirical research on what constitutes USEs according to survey participants is limited, leading to a lack of knowledge about their prevalence and effects. Buczó et al. (2024) identified additional types of USEs in a Hungarian sample, noting that existing surveys often miss these experiences. This study aims to explore diverse participants’ descriptions of USEs and their associations with sexual and psychological well-being using a large, diverse sample and bottom-up approach, using machine learning text analysis. Data from the International Sex Survey, a 42-country, multi-lingual, online survey, includes responses to the Sexual Abuse History Questionnaire (SAHQ). More than 7,000 participants provided text responses describing USEs. Responses will be translated with neural machine translation, revised for accuracy, and analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify emerging topics. Topics will be interpreted and labeled by independent researchers. The study will compare associations between identified USEs and indicators of psychological and sexual well-being and report the frequency of new USE types across demographic groups. The study expects to find USEs identified by Buczó et al. and new types due to the larger, more diverse sample. USEs are hypothesized to be significantly associated with lower sexual and psychological well-being. Identifying previously uncaptured USEs and their consequences can improve research, treatment, policy, and resource allocation.

Research shows that cisgender-identified women experience heterosexual encounters as significantly less pleasurable and have fewer orgasms than cisgender-identified men, a phenomenon known as the pleasure gap or orgasm gap. As evidence suggests that the pleasure gap is not biologically determined, it is important to understand what social forces contribute to its perpetuation. For example, research shows that orgasms are highly relevant to women’s well-being and sexual pleasure. Yet at the same time, it seems that women place little importance on their own orgasms, tend to deprioritize them, and report sexual satisfaction without orgasm. From a social psychological perspective, I am currently applying System Justification Theory as a framework to understand why women rarely complain about the lack of sexual pleasure they experience. The main tenet of this theory is the idea that members of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups are motivated to maintain a positive image of their surrounding social system and actively defend the status quo in order to perceive the given system as fair and just. For women, it can serve palliative functions by reducing the emotional distress caused by the constant experience of inequality, while for men it secures privilege and advantage. I am currently testing these ideas with a series of correlational and experimental studies.

To date, studies on sexuality and sexual education focused mostly on cis-heterosexual individuals’ needs. Adopting an intersectional lens, this study re-centered the experiences of historically marginalized queer communities. In particular, this study aimed to gather knowledge on the sexual needs and interests of queer people who are neurodivergent and/or live with a chronic disease and/or e disability, centering their experiences with sexual education in Italy and the Netherlands. Five focus groups were held with Italian-speaking people (N=22) addressing their experiences with sexuality. All identified as queer and neurodivergent, or queer and living with chronic illness and/or disability. Then, an online survey was developed aiming at exploring the topics that had emerged in the focus groups in a larger sample, N=165 individuals (97 Italian; 41 Dutch; 27 individuals from other countries). Respondents’ satisfaction with the sexual education received was overall poor among both Italy and the Netherlands, as it was reported to be focused on a heteronormative perspective and stereotypical aspects of sexuality. Two independent evaluators identified 11 overarching sub-themes participants wanted to explore further regarding the intersection between sexuality and neurodiversity (e.g., sensory overload); 12 sub-themes regarding sexuality and disability (e.g., accessibility); 9 sub-themes regarding sexuality and chronic illness (e.g., managing pain). Whilst Dutch respondents were more interested in gaining basic knowledge and practical tips on the topics, Italian respondents were more focused on specific issues related to each intersection. The findings underlined the need for a comprehensive queer-competent sex education across Italy and the Netherlands. The results will be implemented to lead the development of a sexual education toolkit.

In questionnaire development, content validity usually is operationalized by using items that too comprehensively express all aspects of the object of measurement. Content validity needs pruning down when the intention is to measure conditions or constructs that should be discerned from other conditions or constructs. In those cases, one needs to focus on “cue validity”, the uniqueness of indicators for a concept. We show how cue validity has been ignored in previously developed questionnaires for hypersexuality and has probably contributed to over-pathologizing high sexual desire as a disorder.