Our Team
Principal Investigator
Verena Klein, PhD
My research focuses on gender, sexuality, and power in intimate relationships. I completed my PhD in Hamburg, Germany, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan, USA, supported by a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, before joining the School of Psychology at the University of Southampton.
My work examines how cultural norms, power, and structural inequalities shape sexual agency, pleasure, and harm, particularly in heterosexual contexts. I was recently awarded an ERC Starting Grant (funded by UKRI) to investigate sexual grey areas—troubling sexual encounters that fall outside the remit of criminal law and are often referred to as “bad sex.”
Postdoctoral Researchers
Gali Pesin-Michael, PhD
My research examines the social psychological processes that shape women’s sexual experiences, with a focus on “bad sex”—consensual encounters that may nonetheless involve harm or wrongdoing—and broader gender inequalities in sexuality, including disparities such as the orgasm gap.
I completed my PhD at Tel Aviv University, where I studied communication strategies that foster reconciliation between historically conflicting groups. I now apply a social psychological lens to questions of gender, sexuality, and inequality.
Léna Nagy, PhD
My research focuses on sexuality and sexual trauma across diverse populations, with particular attention to gender and cross-cultural differences. I completed my doctorate at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary).
I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, where I explore the cultural and gendered dimensions of sexual agency and trauma, as well as the well-being of individuals with marginalized or stigmatized sexualities. I have contributed to international collaborations conducting large-scale cross-cultural research and have taught courses on research methodology and comprehensive sexuality education. I also hold a postgraduate degree in sexual psychology and have worked as a practicing psychologist since 2020.
Chenhao Zhou
My research focuses on gender, sexuality, identity, and culture, with a particular interest in diversity and inclusion. I am currently completing my PhD at Utrecht University (the Netherlands), where I examine workplace inclusion among LGBQI+ employees.
My current postdoc research broadly focuses on structural inequalities, cultural norms, gender ideologies, and power in intimate relationships. In one line of work, I study how ambivalent sexism relates to power asymmetries within romantic relationships, and how these associations vary across countries depending on structural gender inequality and cultural dimensions. In another line of research, I examine how cultural norms interact with individual gendered value polarization around family formation and fertility.
PhD Researchers
Amina Malik
My research focuses on women's sexual experiences, particularly how consensual encounters can nonetheless be harmful, violating, or unpleasant. Central to this is an understanding of sexual consent not as a simple legal or binary concept, but as something shaped by power, gender norms, and cultural context, including the ways in which the romanticization of coercive behaviours distorts how consent is communicated and understood. I am especially interested in how gender inequalities shape intimate experiences, often privileging men's pleasure and influencing the quality and meaning of sex for women. Through my work, I show how inequalities in intimate contexts reflect and reinforce broader social and structural inequalities.