Rationale
Cisgender women and gender minorities were historically excluded from volunteering as research participants in clinical trials and other biomedical research studies, which has led to a bias towards masculinity and male bodies in our understanding of human health and disease. Because of the cultural attitudes of scientists throughout history (almost exclusively cisgender men until uncomfortably recent history), there is a huge historical gap in understanding how the biological construct of sex and the sociocultural construct of gender influence human health and disease. This means that medicine systemically fails to adequately treat cisgender women and gender minorities, and this is explicitly because of a historical sociocultural devaluation of femininity and female bodies.
Theoretical Approach
Since sex and gender are intricately related, my research approach takes a transdisciplinary perspective in order to account for both biological and sociocultural factors. By “transdisciplinary”, I mean the combination of diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches (e.g., neuropsychopharmacology, public health and health equity, trans-feminist philosophy and gender theory) to generate emergent research outputs. For example, a transdisciplinary model of risk for substance-related harms could account for the influence of both (1) “real” (i.e., existing independently of human experience) sex-based mechanisms such as gonadal hormone concentrations and (2) socially constructed meanings such as patriarchal gender relations.
Methods
My research vision relies on three primary methodological approaches:
Human laboratory experiments. A human behavioural pharmacology paradigm that randomizes participants to different drug conditions (including placebo) allows me to investigate how certain sex-related factors (e.g., levels of gonadal hormones like estrogens and progesterone) and gender-related factors (e.g., gender self-concept) influence acute responses to psychoactive drugs (e.g., subjective experiences of drug high after exposure to oral delta-9-tetrahydrocannbinol [THC], the primary intoxicating compound in cannabis).
Qualitative and mixed-method studies. A combination of in-depth one-to-one interviews, focus groups, and surveys allows me to explore how gender (and other intersecting factors such as age, race, and ability) influence and contextualize drug use experiences and risk for experiencing addiction and other drug-related harms.
Clinical trials and other intervention studies. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other intervention studies will allow me to test whether sex- and gender-informed interventions are effective for preventing and/or treating substance use disorders, either at the individual level (i.e., pharmacological or psychosocial treatments) or community/population level (e.g., health education to reduce risky substance use).