Lab News

October

• Several Sagelabbers participated in the Canadian Sex Research Forum's Annual Meeting!
  • Trinda Penniston gave the oral presentation Representation matters: How racial identification and racial attitudes influence sexual response to racially congruent and incongruent stimuli.
    • Trinda won two awards for her presentation: the Best Oral Presentation Award and the Inaugural CSRF BIPOC Research Presentation Award! Congratulations Trinda!
  • Sadhbh Kenny gave her first poster presentation: Beyond vanilla: Gender-diverse individuals' experiences with kink, eroticized gender play, and non-consensual sexual interests.
  • Nina Micanovic presented the poster Gender-specific genital and subjective sexual arousal to prepotent sexual stimuli in androphilic men and gynephilic women.

September

• New advanced publication!
  • Micanovic, N., Timmers, A. D., & Chivers, M. L. (2021). Gender-specific genital and subjective sexual arousal to prepotent sexual stimuli in androphilic men and gynephilic women. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. https://utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/cjhs.2021-0004.

July

• Congratulations to Trinda Penniston for receiving a Robert Sutherland Fellowship!

• Several lab members presented at the International Academy of Sex Research's 2021 Virtual Meeting!
  • Dr. Meredith Chivers moderated and participated in the symposium The Dull Flame of Desire: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Emergent Processes Among Women With and Without Sexual Difficulties.
  • Nina Micanovic presented a data blitz (Gender-specific genital and subjective sexual arousal to prepotent sexual stimuli in androphilic men and gynephilic women) as well as a poster (Beyond vanilla: Gender-diverse individuals’ experiences with kink, eroticized gender play, and non-consensual sexual interests)
  • Trinda presented a poster on her master's thesis research, Representation matters: Racial identification mediates sexual response and attraction to racially congruent and incongruent sexual stimuli.

• Congratulations to Caitlin Barry for being the recipient of the Teaching Assistant Prize in Psychology for the 2020-2021 academic year!

• Congratulations to former Sagelabber Dr. Jackie Huberman for receiving the James Inglis Prize from the Queen's Department of Psychology! Dr. Huberman is currently completing her post-doc at Dalhousie University with Dr. Natalie Rosen in the Couples and Sexual Health Lab.
  • Established by family, colleagues, students and friends in memory of James Inglis, Professor of Psychology at Queen‟s from 1959 to 1965 and from 1968 to 1992 and one of the founders of the Clinical Program. A book prize to be awarded to the graduating doctoral student who has the highest standing in the Clinical Program.

June

• Meredith was recently featured in an article by The Globe and Mail regarding women's sexual health - Read it here! (Note: May be behind a paywall)

• Former Honours thesis student and current Research Coordinator Maddie Katz presented her undergraduate thesis work, "Assessing Implicit Racial Attitudes", at the Annual Ontario Psychology Undergraduate Thesis Conference!

• We are excited to have undergraduate Psychology students Grace Edmonds and Marissa de Boer starting their Honours Theses in the lab this fall!

May

• Congratulations to Caitlin Barry for being one of five recipients of the Ontario Women's Health Scholars Award for the 2021-2022 academic year! The Ontario Women's Health Scholars Award is awarded to a handful of university scholars each year to continue important research with a goal to improve the health and well-being of women across Ontario.

April

• Meredith and Trinda presented at the Society for Sex Therapy & Research's 2021 Annual Meeting!
  • Meredith gave her presentation, Desire emerging from arousal: Factors influencing responsive sexual desire in women with and without sexual difficulties
  • Trinda presented a data blitz, A penny for your (sexual) thoughts: Qualitative analysis of women's and men's self-described reactions to sexual and nonsexual stimuli

March

• Trinda Penniston was featured on the Queen's University School of Graduate Studies podcast Grad Chat to discuss racialized sexual attractions and sexual responses! Listen to the episode here.

January

• The Queen's Journal interviewed Trinda Penniston as part of Aysha Tabassum's piece on sexual liberation while racialized. Read the insightful article here!

December

• The Queen's Psychology Department published an article congratulating Queen's Psychology PhD graduates who were awarded SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowships, including Sagelab's own Jackie Huberman!

June

• We are excited to welcome our new graduate student to the lab this fall: Caitlin Barry will be starting her Doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Welcome to the lab, Caitlin!

• Meredith was featured in a department news story on her winning the undergraduate teaching award for her seminar, Sexuality and Gender.

• Dr. Sam Dawson has accepted a tenure-track position in the Psychology Department at the University of British Columbia. Congratulations Sam!

• Congratulations to Dr. Amanda Timmers on winning a Canadian Psychological Association Certificate of Academic Excellence for the 2019-2020 Year for her doctoral thesis, "Attractiveness and Sexual Response"!

May

• We're excited to have undergraduate lab members Kate and Maddie starting their Honours Theses in the SageLab this fall! Also congratulations Kate on winning an Undergraduate Student Summer Research Fellowship in the lab for this summer.

March

• Congratulations Jackie Huberman on winning a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-doctoral fellowship to study with Dr. Natalie Rosen in the Couples and Sexual Health lab at Dalhousie University!

January

• Have you been binging Netflix shows recently? You may have seen that Dr. Chivers and colleagues' work was recently featured on the Netflix docuseries Sex, Explained (wonderfully narrated by lab favourite, Janelle Monáe)! Their research findings are highlighted in the second episode, "Attraction". Check it out during your next Netflix binge!

November

• Congratulations to Meredith for being appointed a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS)! She was nominated for her outstanding contribution to sexuality research, and awarded the 'Fellow of the Society' title previously given to sex research pioneers including William Masters, Albert Ellis, and Janet Hyde.
  • Meredith was also given Ira and Harriet Reiss Theory award and gave an invited talk on her winning article, “The specificity of women’s sexual response and its relationship with sexual orientations: A review and ten hypotheses” (2017).

• Congratulations to Dr. Amanda Timmers on her convocation! She is the second PhD student to graduate from the SageLab, and is now working in private practice in Ottawa. Congratulations Amanda!

September

• Congratulations to Amanda Timmers, who will be defending her thesis in early September!

• We are excited to welcome two new graduate students to the SageLab! Nina Micanovic and Trinda Penniston will both be starting their Master's degrees in September.

• We are also excited to be launching a new study, Juniper! Recruitment will start up in early September - check back here for more details soon.

June

• Congratulations to Meredith for being named the recipient of the 2018-2019 Undergraduate Teaching Award in Psychology!

May

• Congratulations to Dr. Samantha Dawson for being awarded a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship!

November

• Congratulations to Dr. Samantha Dawson who convocated on Nov 15, making her the first PhD student to graduate from the Sagelab! Congratulations Sam! Sam is now a post-doctoral fellow at the Couples and Sexual Health Lab at Dalhousie University, working with Natalie Rosen.

• Sagelab represented at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality annual meeting in Montreal, with a plenary, three podium talks, and three posters -- well done team!

• Meredith gave a well-attended grand rounds in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Kingston General Hospital.

• Meredith also returned to her clinical alma mater to gave a workshop at the Sexual Behaviours Clinic Research Day at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

October

• Congratulations to Jackie Huberman and her research team on winning a Student Poster Award at the Society for Psychophysiology Research meeting in Quebec City!
  • Huberman, J. S., Mangardich, H., Sabbagh, M. A., & Chivers, M. L. (2018, October). ERP responses to de-contextualized sexual cues. Poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Quebec City, Quebec. Best Student Poster Award Winner

 

• Congratulations to Meredith for winning the Ira and Harriet Reiss Theory Award for her paper:
  • Chivers, M.L. (2017). The specificity of women’s sexual response and its relationship with sexual orientations: A review and ten hypotheses.Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(5), 1161–1179 doi:10.1007/s10508-016-0897-x

 

• Meredith will present a plenary on her paper at the 2019 meeting of SSSS in Denver Colorado, Nov 7-10 2019. Read more.

 

September

• Congratulations to Dan Tassone who successfully defended his masters dissertation, "Mechanisms Contributing to the Specificity of Gynephilic Men’s Sexual Responses"!

 

• Congratulations to Dr. Samantha Dawson who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, "A Cognitive-Motivational Approach to Understanding Gendered Sexual Response: The Role of Attentional Mechanisms"!

• Meredith is profiled in the Kinsey Institute Series - learn about how Meredith got her start in sex research!

 

August

• Meredith weighs in on changes in sexual desire after stopping the pill in this Savage Love guest column.

 

• Meredith is giving a keynote address at the 2018 International Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders Conference, in Vilnius, Lithuania.
  • Chivers, M. L. (2018, August). Gender, sexual arousal, and sexual desire. Keynote address for the International Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders. Vilnius, Lithuania.

 

July

• Awards
  • Congratulations to Meredith Chivers for winning the Richard Green Founding Editor Essay Award, International Academy of Sex Research for her paper!
    • Chivers, M.L. (2017). The specificity of women’s sexual response and its relationship with sexual orientations: A review and ten hypotheses. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(5), 1161–1179 doi:10.1007/s10508-016-0897-x
  • Congratulations to Sam Dawson on winning the International Academy of Sex Research’s Award for Best Student Manuscript! Sam will be presenting her paper at the International Academy of Sex Research meeting in Madrid in July. Her paper also recently appeared in print in the open access journal Royal Society Open (see below)
    • Dawson, S. J., & Chivers, M. L. (2018, July). The effect of static versus dynamic stimuli on visual processing of sexual cues in androphilic women and gynephilic men. Invited presentation for the annual meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Madrid, Spain. Best Student Manuscript Winner.
  • Congratulations to Larah Maunder on winning an Ontario Graduate Scholarship!
  • Congratulations to Nina Micanovic on winning the CPA's Certificate of Academic Excellence for her Honours thesis!

 

• Lab Member Updates
  • Natalie Brown, former honour’s thesis student, NSERC summer student, and research coordinator, was accepted in to the Clinical Psychology Program at UBC. Congratulations Natalie!
  • Amanda Timmers matched to the Royal Ottawa, and will start her clinical internship in Sept. In May, she welcomed Sagelab baby #3, Violet, to the world – congrats Amanda!

 

• Funding Updates
  • Sagelab received funding from SSHRC, CIHR, and a private donor. Many thanks to all these agencies for supporting our work:
    • Development of a novel measure of women’s self-schemas. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Institutional Grant – Explore Competition. $7,000. PI: Chivers, M.L. (2018)
    • Tuning in and turning on: Neurocognitive correlates of responsive sexual desire in women with and without sexual difficulties. Canadian Institutes of Health Research Project Grant, $455,175. PI: Chivers, M.L. Co-As: Brotto, L.A., Dawson, S., Huberman, J., Sabbagh, M., & Todd, R. (2018-2023)
    • Internal Clitoral Structure during Sexual Arousal using MRI. Catherine Oxenberg Foundation, $6000 USD. Co-PIs: Chivers, M.L. & Pukall, C.; co-Is: Stroman, P., & Yessick, L. (2018)

 

• Presentations
  • The SageLab’s Dr. Meredith Chivers and Dan Tassone both gave paper presentations at the Internal LGBTQ Psychology Pre-Conference at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, June 24 & 25, in Montreal.
    • Chivers, M. L. (2018, June). Epistemologies of sexual orientation. What’s sexual arousal and desire got to do with it? International LGBTQ Psychology Pre-Conference at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, Montreal, QC.
    • Tassone, D., Dawson, S.J., & Chivers, M. L. (2018, June). Out of sight, out of mind: Homonegativity predicts straight-identified men's visual avoidance of male targets in static and dynamic sexual stimuli. Data blitz for the International LGBTQ Psychology Pre-Conference at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, Montreal, ON.

 

• Upcoming conferences and talks
  • Sagelab will be busy this fall! Sagelab students will be attending numerous conferences, including the Society for Psychophysiology Research (Oct 3-6), Canadian Sex Research Forum (Oct 11-14), and the Society for Scientific Study of Sexuality (Nov 9-12). Meredith is giving a plenary at IATSO in Lithuania in August, a plenary at SSSS in November, a grand rounds in Ob/Gyne at Kingston General Hospital, and a plenary at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s Forensic Sexology conference.
  • Chivers, M. L. (2018, November, forthcoming). Tuning in, turning on, dropping out: similarity, difference, and complexity in gendered sexual response. Plenary address for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. Montreal, QC.
  • Chivers, M. L. (2018, August, forthcoming). Gender, sexual arousal, and sexual desire. Keynote address for the International Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders. Vilnius, Lithuania.
  • Chivers, M. L. (2018, November). Female sexual psychophysiology and implications for sexual medicine. Grand Rounds in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kingston General Hospital, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON.
  • Chivers, M. L. (2018, November). Women's sexual psychophysiology; implications for forensic assessment and treatment. Presentation for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Sexual Behaviours Clinic Research Day, Toronto, ON
  • Huberman, J. S. & Chivers, M. L. (2018, October, accepted). capturing cognitive structures involved in women’s sexual response. Oral presentation at the annual meeting of the Canadian Sex Research Forum, Toronto, Ontario.
  • Huberman, J. S. & Chivers, M. L. (2018, November, accepted). Capturing cognitive structures involved in women’s sexual response. Oral presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Montreal, Ontario.
  • Huberman, J. S., Mangardich, H., Sabbagh, M. A., & Chivers, M. L. (2018, October, accepted). ERP responses to de-contextualized sexual cues. Poster presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Quebec City, Quebec.
  • Maunder, L., & Pruessner, J. (2018, October). Association of partnership intimacy with hippocampal volume and memory function in healthy adult humans. Poster session presented at the meeting of the Canadian Sex Research Forum, Toronto, ON.
  • Maunder, L., & Pruessner, J. (2018, November). Association of partnership intimacy with hippocampal volume and memory function in healthy adult humans. Poster session presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Montréal, QC.
  • Tassone, D., Dawson, S. J., and Chivers, M. L. (Accepted). Increased homonegativity in gynephilic men predicts visual avoidance of male targets in sexual stimuli. Oral Presentation presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Montreal, QC.
  • Tassone, D., Harrison, G. W., Dawson, S. J., and Chivers, M. L. (Accepted). She was quick to catch my eye: Gender cues impact gynephilic men’s initial detection of sexual stimuli. Oral Blitz presented at the 2018 Canadian Sex Research Forum Annual Conference, Toronto, ON.

 

• 2018 Publications:
  • Dawson, S. J., & Chivers, M. L. (in press). Sexual stimulus modality moderates gaze patterns in women and men. Royal Society Open.
  • Suschinsky, K. D., Chivers, M. L., & Lalumière, M. L. (in press). The relationship between sexual concordance and orgasm consistency in women. Journal of Sex Research, 55(6), 704-718.
    • Read it here!
  • Timmers, A. T., Bossio, J., & Chivers, M. L. (2018) . Disgust, sexual cues, and the prophylaxis hypothesis. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 4(2),179-190. doi: 10.1007/s40806-017-0127-3.
    • Read it here!
  • Timmers, A. T., & Chivers, M. L. (2018). Effects of gender and relationship context cues on responsive solitary and dyadic desire in heterosexual women and men. Journal of Sex Research. doi:: 10.1080/00224499.2018.1456509
  • Shirazi, T. N., Bossio, J. A., Puts, D., & Chivers, M. L. (2018). Menstrual cycle phase predicts women’s hormonal responses to sexual stimuli. Hormones and Behavior, 103, 45–53. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2018.05.023.
    • Read it here!
  • Velten, J., Chivers, M. L., & Brotto, L. A. (2018). Does repeated testing impact concordance between genital and self-reported sexual arousal in women? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47, 651–660. doi: 10.1007/s10508-017-1076-4.
    • Read it here!
  • Timmers, A. T., Dawson, S., & Chivers, M. L. (2018). Gynephilic men’s self-reported and genital responses to relationship context cues. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47, 617–625. doi: 10.1007/s10508-017-1094-2.
    • Read it here!

 

• Media
  • Meredith chimes in on media narrative that "Lesbians do it better" in this Jezebel piece.

November

• Read about the scientists that put Canada on the map as a world leader in human sexuality research in this new Globe and Mail article highlighting the work of our very own: Dr. Meredith Chivers.

• Congratulations to Dr. Kelly Suschinsky for winning the L’Oreal-UNESCO 2017 Excellence in Research Fellowship to support her postdoctoral studies in the Sagelab!
  • Click here to read the Gazette article outlining her outstanding academic achievement!

Tarragon 2.0 Study Launch!

• Sexual arousal and desire problems affect up to one third of women, yet effective and safe treatments do not yet exist. One of the challenges in developing effective treatments is the fact that we know very little about the relationship between sexual arousal and desire.

• We are currently recruiting pre-menopausal women ages 18-50 with OR without sexual arousal and desire difficulties for a study on the relationship between sexual arousal, desire, and motivations. Study procedure involves completing questionnaires about your sexuality, a phone interview about your sexual responses, and an in-lab assessment of your genital responses to sexual and non-sexual videos.

• The results of this research will inform the development of effective treatments for sexual desire difficulties and reduce some of the distress caused by low desire that is felt by up to one third of the population.

• Email sagelab@queensu.ca for more information or to sign-up!

Funding news!

• Congratulations to Amanda Timmers for being awarded a renewal of her Ontario Women’s Health Scholars Award! This prestigious award is given to those researchers who excel, according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence, in the creation of new knowledge about women’s health and its translation into improved health for women, more effective health services and products for women, and a strengthened health care system.

New publications!

• Timmers, A.D., & Chivers, M.L. (2017). Gynephilic men's self-reported and genital sexual responses to relationship context cues. Archives of Sexual Behaviour.
• Huberman, J.S., Dawson, S.J., & Chivers, M.L. (2017). Examining the time course of genital and subjective sexual responses in women and men with concurrent plethysmography and thermography. Biological Psychology.
  • Read it here!

Upcoming Events

• On November 8th Dr. Chivers will be sharing her research with Kingston women at Vino and Vaginas, an event hosted by Taylored Training Physiotherapy to promote open dialogue about women's health issues.

June

• Funding news!
  • Congratulations to Jackie Huberman for being awarded the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council! The Vanier Award program recognizes students who demonstrate leadership skills as well as strong research potential and a high standard of scholarly achievement in graduate studies. The program was developed to help establish Canada as a global centre of excellence in research and higher learning. Read more about the Queen's Vanier recipients here.

April

• Listen to SageLabber Amanda Timmers talk about her research in the April 25th edition of Grad Chat!

• New publication!
  • Dawson, S. J., & Chivers, M. L. (2016). Gender-specificity of initial and controlled visual attention to sexual stimuli in androphilic women and gynephilic men. PloS One. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0152785

March

• Funding news!
  • Congratulations to Amanda Timmers for being awarded the Ontario Women’s Health Scholars Award! This prestigious award is given to those researchers who excel, according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence, in the creation of new knowledge about women’s health and its translation into improved health for women, more effective health services and products for women, and a strengthened health care system. Read more in this article from the Queen's Gazette.

• New publications!
  • Brotto, L. A., Chivers, M. L., & Millman, R. (2016). Mindfulness-based sex therapy improves genital-subjective arousal concordance in women with sexual desire/arousal difficulties. Archives of Sexual Behaviour.
  • Chivers, M. L. (2016). The rainbow becomes a spectrum: Commentary on van Anders (2015), Sexual Configurations Theory. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
  • Suschinsky, K. D., Shelley, A. J., Gerritsen, J., Tuiten, A., & Chivers, M. L. (2016). The clitoral photoplethysmograph: Response specificity and construct validity. Journal of Sexual Medicine

December

• New publication!
  • Chivers, M. L., Bouchard, K., & Timmers, A. D. (2015). Straight but not narrow: Within-gender variation in the gender-specificity of women's sexual response. PLOS One.
    • PDF available free at: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0142575

November

• New research publications!
  • Suschinsky, K. D., Shelley, A. D., Gerritsen, J., Tuiten, A., & Chivers, M. L. (in press). The clitoral photoplethysmograph: Response specificity and construct validity. Journal of Sexual Medicine.
  • Rieger, G., Savin-Williams, R., Chivers, M. L., & Bailey, J. M. (2015). Sexual arousal and masculinity-femininity of women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000077
  • Timmers, A. D., Bouchard, K., & Chivers, M. L. (2015). Effects of gender and sexual activity cues on the sexual responses of women with multidimensionally defined bisexuality. Journal of Bisexuality, 15, 154-179. doi: 10.1080/15299716.2015.1023389
  • Bouchard, K., Timmers, A.D., & Chivers, M. L. (2015). Gender-specificity of genital response and self-reported sexual arousal in women endorsing facets of bisexuality. Journal of Bisexuality, 15, 180-203. doi: 10.1080/15299716.2015.1022924

June

• New research article published!
  • Huberman, J. S., & Chivers, M. L. (in press). Evaluating gender-specificity of sexual arousal in women and men using thermography. Psychophysiology.
    • Jackie Huberman's thesis shows that gendered patterns of sexual response, where heterosexual women respond to both preferred and non-preferred sexual stimuli, are also found using thermal imaging to measure temperature change in the genitals during sexual arousal, instead of just with traditional measures of genital response (vaginal and penile plethysmography). This is important work because some critics of gendered sexual response believe these patterns happen only because of the instruments we use to measure sexual arousal in women. This study shows that we find the same gender-nonspecific pattern of sexual response in heterosexual women using a different measure of genital response, strengthening the argument that women's sexual response operates differently that men's.
    • Jackie won the Best Student Manuscript at the International Academy of Sex Research for this manuscript too! Jackie will be presenting her paper at the 41st meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research meeting in Toronto, Aug 9-13 2015.

November

• November 6, 8pm ET! Watch "Decoding Desire" on the Nature of Things, featuring SageLab research! Dr. Chivers will be doing a live twitter chat during the episode - tune in at @QSageLab.
  • Live stream URL: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/decoding-desire

October

• October 24-26, the Sagelab co-hosts the 41st annual meeting of the Canadian Sex Research Forum!

• Dr. Chivers will not be accepting new graduate, postgraduate, or undergraduate students for the 2015-2016 academic year.

July

• Congratulations to Dr. Meredith Chivers on being awarded the Canadian Institute of Health Research New Investigator Award!

• Congratulations to Samantha Dawson for winning an International Academy of Sex Research Student Research Development Award!

June

• Congratulations to Sagelab post-doc, Dr. Kelly Suschinsky, on being awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). Kelly also received a CIHR travel award to present recent Sagelab research at the Annual Meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from June 25 to 28.

• Congratulations to Dr. Meredith Chivers and Samantha Dawson, on being awarded a Senate Advisory Research Council Grant from Queen's University to investigate the attentional mechanisms involved in sexual arousal and desire difficulties in women.

• Congratulations to Jackie Huberman for being awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) to start her PhD in September of this year!

• Congratulations to Amanda Timmers for winning a Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) Certificate of Academic Excellence as well as being nominated for a Teaching Assistantship Award in Psychology!

• Congratulations to Samantha Dawson and Jackie Huberman for winning the Best Symposium Award at the Psychology Outside the Box Conference in Ottawa on June 19 and 20 with their symposium entitled “New Paradigms for the Sexual Psychophysiological Assessment of Sexual Interest and Arousal in Women and Men”.

February

• The Sagelab is excited to host Dr. Lori Brotto, Ph.D., on her visit to Queen's as part of the Department of Psychology's Distinguished Speaker Series. Dr. Brotto's colloquium, Mindfulness and Sex, will cover innovative, mindfulness-based treatment approaches for women experiencing difficulties in sexual desire, arousal, distress, and genital pain. The colloquium will occur at 2:30 P.M. on Friday, February 28 in Biosciences 1103 – we hope to see you there!

July

• Congratulations to former Sagelabber, Jennifer Bossio. for winning the International Academy of Sex Research Best Student Manuscript prize -- way to go Jenn! The paper will appear in the Archives of Sexual Behavior and reports on NSERC-funded research examining menstrual cycle effects on the gender-specificity of women's sexual arousal:
  • Bossio, J. A., Suschinsky, K. D., Puts, D., & Chivers, M. L. (Provisionally accepted). Does menstrual cycle phase influence the gender specificity of heterosexual women’s genital and subjective sexual arousal? Archives of Sexual Behavior.

• Sagelab was awarded Canadian Institutes of Health Research funding to study women's sexual arousal and desire, with Sagelab collaborators Drs. Lori Brotto, Tom Hollenstein, and Sari van Anders!

• The Guardian publishes an excerpt from Bergner's book, "What Do Women Want?", discussing Sagelab research.

June

• Continued media coverage of Daniel Bergner's book "What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire" featuring Sagelab research. Below are some of the latest:
  • The Atlantic: "What Being Editor in Chief of Playgirl Taught Me about Female Desire" by Ronnie Koenig.
  • The Atlantic: "Turns Out Women Have Really, Really Strong Sex Drives: Can Men Handle It?" by Hugo Schwyzer.
  • The Atlantic: "Women Want Sex. But Men Don't Want Them to Know It" by Amanda Hess.
  • The Boston Globe book review.

• Congratulations to Jackie Huberman for winning a SSHRC master's fellowship!

May

Sagelab research discussed in New York Times Magazine article, "Unexcited? There May Be a Pill for That" by Daniel Bergner. The research mentioned in the article describes the following studies:

• Chivers, M. L., & Timmers, A. D. (2012). The effects of gender and relationship context cues in audio narratives on heterosexual women’s and men’s genital and subjective sexual response. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41,185–197. Link to article.

• Dawson, S. J., Suschinsky, K. D., & Lalumière, M. L. (2013). Habituation of Sexual Responses in Men and Women: A Test of the Preparation Hypothesis of Women's Genital Responses. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 10, 990-1000. Link to article.

Sagelab graduate students receive fellowships and awards:

• Congratulations to Amanda Timmers for winning a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellowship!

• Congratulations to Samantha Dawson for being awarded the University of Lethbridge's Medal of Merit!

• Congratulations to Jackie Huberman for winning an Ontario Graduate Scholarship!

September

• 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

• The 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

• 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.

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