I investigate digital and medical technologies to uncover answers at the heart of our intimate lives. My research has taken me to London, Amsterdam and San Francisco, exploring topics from dating apps to HIV Prevention. Every time I step into the arena, I strive to acknowledge how power and context are always at play...
Timeline
2018
'South Asian MSM’ in HIV Prevention in England (2018)
Four-year-long multi-method doctoral research project examining archives, videos, documents and expert accounts (ongoing).
- Who do we think of when we say South Asian MSM in HIV Prevention?
- How have these men been typically marginalised and left out of conversations?
- What efforts have been made to provide care and belonging?
- What are the unhelpful stereotypes?
2017
Filtered Love
17 candid accounts from men in London using Tinder and Grindr
With sex researcher Safiya Jones, I listened for the new rhythms and expectations of pleasure-seeking and connection today. The apps allowed users to go beyond traditional restrictions of time and space to establish new forms of intimacy (even if fleeting) while also enabling new forms of exclusion.
2016
Men’s PrEP Prescription Journeys in San Francisco
13 complex stories from men using a preventative HIV pharmaceutical
As part of seven-week-long fieldwork in San Francisco, I found that participants faced ‘red tape’, job instability and unhelpful practitioners and other obstacles. But even in the early days of PrEP, San Francisco had a network of communities, institutions and people who have embraced PrEP and streamlined access to it.
2016
Grindr: The speedy sexy market of men’s bodies in digital capitalism
492 online profiles (n=492) in central London
Grindr can be empowering, but also has a competitive marketplace logic, which can be harmful. My study illuminates how users draw on stereotypes to value and/or sort men's bodies based on age, build, race, status and virility. Grindr's user interface (UI) facilitates this process by emphasising demographics, aesthetics, and speediness.