Researchers

Dr. Samira van Bohemen

The social organization of sexual pleasure

My research, supported by a prestigious NWO Vidi Grant, studies the questions:

1. How do social identities, inequalities, and cultural backgrounds shape what people find sexually attractive and pleasurable?
2. How do these attractions and pleasures, in turn, reproduce or challenge social identities and inequalities?
3. And how can we design effective interventions that foster healthier, more inclusive, and more equal sexual cultures?

Dr. Michael Rojek-Giffin

Social conduct, stereotypes and sexuality

1. How do people learn (or fail to learn) the unwritten rules of social conduct at the behavioral, computational, and neural level?
2. Which stereotypes exist in and spread through mainstream pornography, and which demographic factors predict affinity with particular stereotypes?

Answering these questions contributes to establishing how and to what extent (embodied) sexual preferences are socially determined.

Dr. Olga Lyashevska

Software solutions for SPICE research

1. Using Natural Language Processing and other machine learning techniques to study SPICE questions.
2. Programming an online research game and other software for SPICE studies.

Lena van de Lande

Porn preferences, stereotypes and sexual fantasies

1. How do people interpret and classify mainstream heterosexual pornography?
2. How are sexual fantasies socially shaped and what role do stereotypes play in people’s sexual fantasies?

Lotte Mikkers

Sexual stereotypes, youth and digital culture

1. How do young people engage with the gendered and racialised stereotypes they encounter in pornography?
2. How can we design interventions that strengthen sexual media literacy to reduce harms and promote healthy, equitable sexual development?