Global Transformations in Transgender Medicine: How Clinicians, Patients, and Activists Create Gender-Affirming Healthcare (under contract with NYU Press)

Based on four years of research in Thailand, the U.S., and virtual spaces, my current book project examines how legitimacy struggles around expertise, gender, and culture impact the development of gender-affirming healthcare on a transnational scale. Gender-affirming healthcare refers to the medical or mental care that transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people access to affirm their gender identities.

Drawing on 83 in-depth interviews, participant observation of transgender health conferences, and content analysis of a wide array of written materials, I show how clinicians, patients, and activists in both nations must grapple with hegemonic notions about binary gender, normative whiteness, and the Global North as a modern world region as they strive to move transgender medicine forward.

Research Support:

National Science Foundation (NSF), Graduate Research Fellowship (2018-2022)

Sexualities Project at Northwestern, Dissertation Fellowship (2021-2022)

Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University), Dispute Resolution Research Center Grant (2020)

The Graduate School (Northwestern University), Graduate Research Grant (2020)

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Past Research

Kathoey Identity and Double Consciousness (2017) 

This research examined how the Du Boisian concept of double consciousness can help explain key processes of self-formation for kathoey in Thailand (gender nonconforming individuals with a feminine gender presentation). The research is based on the argument that the marginalization of Du Bois within the sociological canon has negatively impacted the field’s ability to theorize self-formation in relation to other systems of oppression, such as cisnormativity, and self-formation beyond the Atlantic World. My publication in Social Problems (2021) develops a theory of “paired double consciousness,” which argues that cisnormative and neocolonial oppression lead kathoey to experience two veils. The first veil divides self-formation between kathoey and dominant cisgender worlds within Thai society to produce “gender double consciousness.” The second veil divides self-formation between kathoey and dominant transgender worlds within a global community, which creates “transnational double consciousness.”

Research Support:

Buffett Institute for Global Studies; Graduate Student Dissertation Research Travel Award (2017)

Sexualities Project at Northwestern; Summer Research Grant (2017)