IASSCS Board Members

Peter Aggleton

Professor of Education and former Director of Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. He is internationally known for his analytic work on the cultural aspects of sexuality. His particular interests include studies of young people’s health and health behavior, of sexual and reproductive health, and of health education and health promotion. He has global experience researching the social aspects of HIV-related prevention, treatment and care and assisted UNAIDS in developing their strategy for Intensifying HIV Prevention globally (2005).

Violeta Barrientos

Doctor in Latin American Studies, writer and lawyer. Former Director of the Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights for the Andean Region. Field of activity: human rights, gender, sexual diversity, relationships between church and state, discourse analysis.

Evelyn Blackwood

PhD from Stanford University. She is Associate Professor in Anthropology and Women’s Studies at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.A. She has published a number of works addressing topics such as Native American female two-spirits, tombois in Indonesia, gender and power, matrilineal kinship, and theories of sexualities Dr. Blackwood’s research interest and passion throughout her career has been women’s sexualities outside the West. Her desire to research this topic was driven by the invisibility of women’s same-sex relations globally and the lack of effort by scholars to examine the processes particular to women’s sexualities and female masculinities.

Carlos Cáceres

Medical doctor and social researcher in health. He obtained his doctorate in public health at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently Principal Professor of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University, Lima, where he conducts research on sexualities, health and sexual rights, and coordinates the Masters Program in Gender Sexuality and Reproductive Health. He is also a researcher at the Center for the AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Network for Latin America and the Caribbean. Besides, Dr. Caceres is currently President of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality and Culture in Society Board.

Diane Di Mauro

PhD in Social Psychology from Stony Brook University. She is the Program Director of the MAC AIDS Fund Leadership Initiative at Columbia University and UCLA. At the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University, she is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences and the co-facilitator of the Sexuality and Health MPH specialized degree track. Dr. di Mauro has worked over 20 years in the field of reproductive rights and human sexuality, specializing in the design, implementation and supervision of major programmatic initiatives relating to public health and policy for national NGOs.

Gary W. Dowset

PhD, is Deputy Director at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. Professor Dowsett is also an Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University in New York, where he spent US academic years 2003-04 teaching in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, and working with the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. A sociologist by trade, he has long been interested in sexuality research, particularly in relation to the rise of modern gay communities.

Maria Luiza Heilborn

BA in History, a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, and a Post Doctorate in France in the field of Social Demography. She is a full-time Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Medicina Social da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (IMS/UERJ), where she develops teaching and research activities and also coordinates the Centro Latino-Americano em Sexualidade e Direitos Humanos [the Latin American center on sexuality and human rights] and the Programa em Gênero, Sexualidade e Saúde [program on gender, sexuality and health]. Her academic work has privileged the issues of gender, sexuality, youth, and family.

Gilbert Herdt

PhD, is a cultural anthropologist, Professor of Human Sexuality Studies and Anthropology and he has directed the National Sexuality Resource Center since 2002. He is also the Executive Director of the National Sexuality Resource Center (NSRC), which advances sexual literacy in the US, and has had long-term support from the Ford Foundation. Previously he has taught at Stanford University and the University of Chicago. Dr. Herdt has been a Fulbright, NIMH, and Guggenheim Fellow, and has served in many organizational and founding national and international roles at research centers, on committees, and in government agencies.

Khuat Thu Hong

Co-Director of the Institute for Social Development Studies, a non-governmental, non-profit organization in Hanoi, Vietnam. She has a B.A in Psychology from the Moscow State University, former USSR and a PhD in Sociology from the Institute of Sociology, Hanoi. Dr. Hong worked for the main Vietnam Government research institution for sixteen years before she moved to UNDP - Vietnam in 2000-2001 as a gender specialist. In 2002 Dr. Hong helped to found the Institute for Social Development Studies. Hong’s major fields of studies include gender, sexuality, reproductive and sexual health and HIV/AIDS.

Lenore Manderson

PhD, FASSA, FWAAS, holds appointment as Research Professor both in the School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, and School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She works as a medical anthropologist and social historian, and in sociology and public health, on gender and sexuality, infectious and non-communicable disease, among minority populations in Australia and in Asia and Africa. She was a founding member of IASSCS and President from 2001-2003. She has worked extensively to strengthen institution capability and develop research capacity in the social sciences, gender and health.

Richard Parker

Medical anthropologist, whose research focuses on the social and cultural construction of gender and sexuality, the social aspects of HIV/AIDS, and the relationship between social inequality, health, and disease. He has conducted long-term research in Brazil since the early 1980s, as well as comparative studies in Asia, Africa, North America, and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Parker has also served on numerous commissions and held a range of positions in program and advocacy work.

Graeme Reid

Graduate of the University of Amsterdam. His thesis entitled ‘How to be a ‘real’ gay. Emerging gay spaces in small-town South Africa’ is concerned with the interplay between transnational and local understandings of sexuality and gender in the wake of sweeping social and political change in contemporary South Africa. Prior to joining Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale, Graeme was a sexuality researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) in Johannesburg. His research interests included systemic violence, HIV/AIDS, masculinities and gay self-identification and cultural expression in post apartheid South Africa.

Richmond Tiemoko

Director of the Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre (ARSRC). He has worked extensively in the area of reproduction, family dynamic, and health and migration in West Africa. Dr. Tiemoko’s research interests include sexuality, reproduction, children, family dynamics, migration, and social change. Prior to joining ARSRC, Dr. Tiemoko was a research fellow at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex in Brighton, United Kingdom. His research focused on migration and health outcomes of children, and family impact on migration and development.

Saskia Eleonora Wieringa

Director of the International Information Centre and Archives for the Women’s Movement, Amsterdam and the Scientific Director of the European Sexuality Resource Centre, at the IIAV, which was set up in October 2005, as well as the Director of HRSC Consultancy (Human Rights, Sexuality and Culture), set up in July 2003. She is a Professor at the University of Amsterdam, holding the chair of Gender and Women’s Same Sex Relations cross culturally. She has a long experience of activism in both the women’s, lesbian and third world solidarity movements.

Huso Yi

PhD is a postdoctoral research fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University and Deputy Director of the Korean Sexual-Minority Culture and Rights Center. He received his doctorate in Health Studies: Human Sexuality at New York University and was also trained in psychology, philosophy, and anthropology. For more than a decade he has been internationally involved in social movements and participatory research for sexual rights and health with his strong commitment to working for the populations who are ignored, marginalized, and stigmatized, therefore highly vulnerable to sexual inequality.