Welcome!

For information about becoming a research participant, please click here. 

Our Mission

Sexuality is a fundamental aspect of human nature. Although it may come as no surprise that women are different from men, given the different reproductive and social roles of each sex, gender differences in aspects of  sexuality are numerous and profound. Traditional models of sexual response, sexual dysfunction, and sexual orientation, however, are not gender-specific and, as such, do not adequately explain observed differences in female and male sexuality. Undifferentiated models of sexuality run the risk of biasing observations and interpretations of sexual phenomena as deficits or excesses, depending on what standard is adopted. Recently, however, there has been a paradigm shift in thinking about female and male sexuality, and gender-specific models are emerging.

Our laboratory is dedicated to understanding gender differences, and similarities in sexuality, including sexual psychophysiology, sexual orientation, and sexual functioning.  We conduct both basic research, such as examining sexual response in women and men in the laboratory, and clinical research, such as understanding factors that contribute to healthy sexual functioning. We primarily investigate these topics from a biopsychological perspective informed by evolutionary theory, and enriched by an understanding of the sociocultural environment in which our sexualities unfold.

To find out more about our lab members, current projects, collaborations, and recent media coverage of lab activities, or to get involved with Sagelab research, please click on the links on the left side of this page.

 

SageLab News

September 2012:

Welcome to Jackie Huberman and Sam Dawson, the newest grad students in the Sagelab! 

Congratulations to Jackie Huberman for winning the Society for Sex Therapy and Research Sandra J. Leiblum Student Research Award for her manuscript entitled, "Relationship between impression management and three measures of women’s self-reported sexual arousal." Way to go Jackie!

Jackie also won the Student Poster Award for the same paper at the annual Canadian Sex Research Forum meeting in Ottawa. 

June 2012:

Sagelab was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to investigate the effects of gender norms on agreement between genital and self-reported sexual arousal!  Congratulations to Drs. Chivers, Suschinsky and our collaborator at Ohio State University,Dr. Terri Fisher!  

January 2012:

Welcome to Dr. Kelly Suschinsky, Sagelab's first post-doctoral fellow!  Kelly will be leading new research on agreement between genital and self-reported and methods of assessing genital response.

November 2011:

Meredith Chivers returns to her sex therapist roots and offers sex advice on Dan Savage's sex advice column, Savage Love, November 16, 2011.

On November 15th, 2011, Sagelab's Jenn Bossio (pic below) and Jessica Spape received their Master's of Science. Congratulations to Jenn & Jessica -- Here's to creating more sex researchers!

October 2011:

Sagelab is now tweeting from QSagelab. Follow us on Twitter to stay updated on lab news, current research, and for links to other research, media, and news on world events relating to sexuality and gender.

UPDATE!  As of April 10th, 2013, we have 604 followers!