Senior Tutors

Meg Barker (The Open University, UK)
Meg Barker is a lecturer in psychology and an existential psychotherapist specialising in sexual and relationship therapy. Her research focuses on the social norms and rules around sexuality and gender and how these impact both those who try to meet them and those who transgress them. Meg has conducted a number of linked creative and participatory studies within sexual communities, particularly relating to bisexuality, BDSM, and consensual non-monogamy. She has used various qualitative methods (interviews, discussions, on-line questionnaires, analysis of web materials, and visual methods) to investigate the ways in which people in these communities negotiate their identities and relationships. Barker has also analysed the representations of such identities and relationships in mainstream media and in psychology textbooks.

Key Publications:

  • Langdridge, D. & Barker, M. (Eds.) (2007). Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Barker, M. (2007). Heteronormativity and the exclusion of bisexuality in psychology. In V. Clarke & E. Peel (Eds.), Out in Psychology: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Perspectives (pp.86-118). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
  • Barker, M. & Langdridge, D. (Eds.) (2010). Understanding Non-monogamies. NewYork: Routledge.

Paisley Currah (Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA)
Research Interests: Paisley Currah is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Currah works in the intersections of political theory, gender and sexuality studies, studies in law and society, LGBT studies, and transgender studies. He has widely written on the transgender rights movement. His current work investigates state constructions of sex for the purposes of recognition and national projects that use gender as a distributive mechanism.

Key Publications:

  • Currah, P. Green, J., & Stryker, S. (2008, April). The state of transgender rights in the United States of America. Paper presented at a meeting, “Global Dialog on Sexual Health and Well Being organized by the four regional National Sexuality Resource Centers,” New York, NY.
  • Currah, P. (2008). Stepping back, looking outward: Situating transgender activism and transgender studies—Kris Hayashi, Matt Richardson, and Susan Stryker frame the movement. Sexuality Research and Social Policy 5(1), 93–105.
  • Currah, P., Juang, R. M., & Price Minter, S. (Eds.) (2006). Transgender Rights. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Cynthia A. Gómez (San Francisco State University, USA)
Research Interests: Cynthia A. Gómez is the founding director of San Francisco State University’s Health Equity Institute. She is a leading scientist in HIV prevention, and previously served as co-director of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at University of California, San Francisco, where she was also an associate professor in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Gómez is a pioneer in research on cultural determinants of sexual behaviors, gender dynamics, and programs for people living with HIV. She has served on several national committees, including the Center for Disease Control’s HIV and STD Advisory Council, and is a member of the board of trustees of the National AIDS Fund, the Guttmacher Institute, and of Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research (PRIM&R). She was an appointed member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS under both the William J. Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Key Publications:

  • Purcell, D. W., Latka, M. H., Metsch, L. R., Latkin, C. A., Gómez, C. A., Mizuno, Y., et al. (2007). Results from a randomized controlled trial of a peer-mentoring intervention to reduce HIV transmission and increase access to care and adherence to HIV medications among hiv-seropositive injection drug users. JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 46, S35-S47.
  • Halkitis P, Gómez CA, Wolitski (Eds.), (2005) HIV+Sex: The Psychological and Interpersonal Dynamics of HIV-Seropositive Gay and Bisexual Men’s Relationships, APA Publishers, Washington DC.
  • Gómez, C. A. & VanOss Marin, B. (1996). Gender, culture, and power: Barriers to HIV-prevention strategies for women. The Journal of Sex Research, 33(4), 355-362.

Peter Hegarty (University of Surrey, UK)
Research Interests: Peter Hegarty is the Deputy Head of Department at the University of Surrey. His research interests cut across social psychology, LGBT psychology, and the history of psychology and are concerned with the relationship between the social construction of scientific facts and sexual politics. He is currently completing his first book; Matters between men: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman and the Debate that Made Sex Unsmart for the University of Chicago Press.

Key Publications:

  • Hegarty, P. (Ed.). (2007). The history of power. History of Psychology. 10 (2), 75-226. [Special issue]. Includes the articles “Getting dirty: Psychology’s history of power.” (pp. 75-91) and “From genius inverts to gendered intelligence: Lewis Terman and the power of the norm.” (p.132-155).
  • Hegarty, P., Lemieux, A., & McQueen, G. (in press). Graphing the order of the sexes: Constructing, recalling, interpreting, and putting the self in gender difference graphs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
  • Hegarty, P. (2009). Toward an LGBT-affirmative informed paradigm for children who break gender norms: A comment on Drummond et al. (2008) and Rieger et al. (2008). Developmental Psychology, 45, 895-900.

Lih-Mei Liao (University College London Hospitals, UK)
Lih-Mei Liao is Lead Psychologist for Women’s Health at University College London Hospitals, UK. Her clinical and research activities are concerned with psychological and societal responses to female genitalia deemed insufficiently feminine, including genital presentations associated with ‘disorders of sex development’. Her peer reviewed papers and book chapters problematize Medicine’s attempt to hetero-normalize genital anatomies via surgical feminization.

Key Publications:

  • Liao L-M, Creighton SM. Female genital cosmetic surgery. Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists Scientific Advisory Committee Opinion Paper. In press.
  • Liao L-M, Green H, Creighton SM, Crouch NS, Conway GS. (2010). Patient experiences of obtaining and giving information about disorders of sex development. British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 117(2): 193-199.
  • Liao, L. M., Boyle, M. (Eds.) (2004). Intersex (Special Issue). The Psychologist, 17(8): 446-462.
  • Creighton, S. M., & Liao L. M. (2004). Changing attitudes to sex assignment in intersex. British Journal of Urology International, 93, 659-664.

Brian Mustanski (University of Illinois, Chicago, USA)
Dr. Mustanski is the Director of the IMPACT LGBT Health and Development Program, which includes multiple NIH- and foundation- funded studies. The majority of his research focuses on the health and development of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. He is currently the PI of two longitudinal studies of sexual minority adolescents in order to more fully understand the development of sexual orientation and identify factors that promote resilience. A major priority of his research is the translation of basic findings into intervention, and as such he is conducting two NIH funded studies to develop and test HIV prevention programs for young men who have sex with men. Dr. Mustanski is a licensed Clinical Psychologists with specialization in the treatment of sexual and relationship problems.

Key Publications:

  • Garofalo, R., Mustanski, B., & Donenberg, G. (2008). Parents know and parents matter; is it time to develop family-based HIV prevention programs for young men who have sex with men? Journal of Adolescent Health, 43, 201-204.
  • Mustanski, B. (2008). Moderating effects of age on the alcohol and sexual risk taking association: An online daily diary study of men who have sex with men. AIDS and Behavior, 12, 118-126.
  • Mustanski, B. (2007). The influence of state and trait affect on HIV risk behaviors: A daily diary study of MSM. Health Psychology, 26, 618-626.

Charlotte J. Patterson (Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, USA)
Research Interests: Charlotte J. Patterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, where she teaches courses on developmental psychology and on the psychology of sexual orientation. She is best known for her research on lesbian and gay parents and their children. Patterson has also co-edited three books on sexual orientation and human development and a recent special section of the journal Developmental Psychology on sexual orientation across the lifespan. She and Tony D’Augelli are currently co-editing a new Handbook of Psychology and Sexual Orientation.

Key publications:

  • Wainright, J. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2008). Peer relations among adolescents with female same-sex parents. Developmental Psychology, 44, 117 – 126.
  • Patterson, C. J. (2009). Children of lesbian and gay parents: Psychology, law, and policy. American Psychologist, 64, 727 – 736.
  • Farr, R. H., & Patterson, C. J. (2009). Transracial adoption by lesbian, gay, and heterosexual couples: Who completes transracial adoptions, and with what results? Adoption Quarterly, 12, 187 – 204.
  • Riskind, R., & Patterson, C. J. (in press). Parenting intentions and desires among childless lesbian, gay, and heterosexual individuals. Journal of Family Psychology.

Anne Peplau (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Research Interests: Anne Peplau is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Trained as a social psychologist, her research focuses on topics at the intersection of gender, sexual orientation, and intimate relationships. Her current research interests include sexual orientation, sexual identity, and same-sex couples. Peplau is also interested in gender and close relationships. She is the Director of an NSF-sponsored interdisciplinary graduate training program in Relationship Science at UCLA.
Website: peplaulab.ucla.edu

Key Publications:

  • Peplau, L. A. & Huppin, M. (2008). Masculinity, femininity and the development of sexual orientation in women. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health, 12(1/2), 147-167. Also to be published as a chapter in R. Mathy (Ed.) Childhood gender nonconformity and the development of adult homosexuality (pp 147-167. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.
  • Peplau, L. A., & Fingerhut, A. W. (2007). The close relationships of lesbians and gay men. Annual Review of Psychology, 58. 10.1-10.20.
  • Peplau, L. A. (2001). Rethinking women’s sexual orientation: An interdisciplinary, relationship focused approach. Personal Relationships, 8, 1-19.

Leo Wilton (Binghamton University, SUNY, USA)
Leo Wilton, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Africana Studies at Binghamton University. His primary research interests include health disparities (HIV and AIDS), community based research and evaluation, and Black psychological development and mental health. His scholarly research on the AIDS epidemic focuses on the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality as situated in the lives of Black gay and bisexual men. His research interests examine socio-cultural factors that provide the basis for the development of culturally applicable HIV protective and risk prevention interventions for Black gay and bisexual men. Dr. Wilton completed a Ph.D. degree in counseling psychology at New York University (NYU), predoctoral clinical psychology fellowship at the Yale University School of Medicine, and a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship in HIV behavioral research and evaluation at NYU.

Key Publications:

  • Wilton, L. (2010). Where do we go from here? Raising the bar of what constitutes multicultural competence in working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. In J. Ponterotto, J. M. Cases, L. A. Suzuki, & C. Alexander (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural counseling (pp. 313-328). 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
  • Wilton, L., Herbst, J. H., Coury-Doniger, P., Painter, T. M., English, G., Alvarez, M. E., Scahill, M., Roberson, M. A., Lucas, B., Johnson, W.D., & Carey, J.W. (2009). Efficacy of an HIV/STI Prevention Intervention for Black Men Who Have Sex with Men: Findings from the Many Men, Many Voices (3MV) Project. AIDS and Behavior, 13, 532-544.
  • Wilton, L. (2009). A preliminary investigation of body image and HIV sexual risk behavior in Black gay and bisexual men: Implications for HIV Prevention. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 21, 309-325.
  • Wilton, L. (2009). Men who have sex with men of color in the age of AIDS: The sociocultural contexts of stigma, marginalization, and structural inequalities. In V. Stone, B. Ojikuti, K. Rawlings, & K. Smith (Eds.), HIV/AIDS in communities of color (pp. 179-212). New York: Springer Press.