Pleasure Down South: Infusing joy into sexual health and research practices
In 1972 the cult classic The Joy of Sex was first published, bringing with it much-needed discourse around sex. Now, fifty years later, we invite you to discuss the Joy of Sexual Health and communications around sexual health research.
Typically, sexual health communication is shrouded in doom and gloom and worst-case scenarios. In light of this, the World Health Organisation highlights the need for the promotion of “physical, emotional, mental, and social we–being related to sexuality.” Furthermore, in their promotion of World Sexual Health Day on the 4th of September, they explain that sexual health is so much more than the “absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity.” In short, we need to reframe sexual health messaging and highlight health and well-being.
To mark the importance of World Sexual Health Day and to open up the discourse around sexual health, GIFT invites you to attend the fourth episode of Women up to Know Good, Pleasure Down South: Infusing joy into sexual health and research practices webinar on the 12th of September 2024. The webinar features a panel of experts who will dive into sexual health that aims to shift thinking and explore ideas around sexual health messaging. Rather than being a space of anxiety, shame, dread, and discomfort, panellists will discuss how sexual health messaging can be liberating and create a space of joy.
Register and join the sexual health revolution.
Panellists
Dr Kirstin Mitchell is a Medical Research Council Investigator based in the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow. She leads a team that combines a range of sexy research methods to analyse how social relationships contribute to sexual health and well-being, and identify relational risk factors. Dr Mitchell’s research focuses on sexual wellbeing and gender-based violence and she is widely published. She is also the editor of the Annual Review of Sexual Research and supports the Scottish Government on strategies to improve sexual health and wellbeing. From 2018-2023 Dr Mitchell co-led the European Sexual Medicine Network which helped to establish an ongoing European Collaboration of National survey leads in sexual behaviour and health.
Dr Jessie Ford is a sociologist whose research explores how expectations and inequalities around gender and sexuality shape sexual health, violence, and pleasure. Dr Ford completed her MSc in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and her PhD in Sociology at NYU. She offers a fresh perspective on sexual health through her insights into the sociology of culture and studies of gender inequality. Her research explores how micro-level processes combine with meso- or macro-level norms, power differences, or institutional realities to perpetuate social inequality. While her research primarily focuses on the sexual health of young adults in the US, she has also done work in China and Southeast Asia. Dr Ford’s work explores the importance of sexual pleasure, an often overlooked and stigmatised dimension of sexual health and human rights, and advocates for its inclusion in public health policy, program implementation, and clinical practice.
Dr Pamela Gumbi is a lecturer in Biochemistry with more than a decade of postgraduate research training and experience in health sciences. When it comes to sexual health research, she strives to find ways to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in young women, largely through mucosal immunology. Dr Gumbi has published peer-reviewed articles in high-impact factor journals and has made scientific contributions at national and international conferences.
Facilitator
Phumla Radebe is a PhD student working on the GIFT project, to evaluate the predictive value of IL-1a and IL-1b for accurately identifying women with asymptomatic STIs or BV. Her PhD focuses on the regulatory requirement for SAHPRA approval of the GIFT device and conducting a device accuracy trial needed for registration, and is being supervised by Drs Jo-Ann Passmore and Fezile Khumalo.
Phumla joined the group as a Research associate in January 2022, during which she also completed her MSc degree through the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (UKZN) Pietermaritzburg, which focused on genital inflammation and cervical changes associated with vaginal insertion practices in adolescent girls and young women from Kwa-Zulu.-