Doug P. VanderLaan, Ph.D. Dr. VanderLaan, Director of the Biopsychosocial Investigations of Gender Laboratory, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga and a Collaborator Scientist in Child and Youth Psychiatry at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Prior to these appointments, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Psychology at the University of Lethbridge, and a B.A. (Hon.) in Psychology at McMaster University. Email: doug.vanderlaan@utoronto.ca. Faculty Webpage
Diana Peragine, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow. Diana views sexual development through a biopsychosocial lens, asking how sexual inequality is written on the body. Her early Ph.D. work used an animal model with the strictest social and reproductive hierarchy among mammals to reveal the neuroendocrine pathway by which social marginalization can block puberty. Diana's later Ph.D. and ongoing work examines human sexual development from a privilege perspective, acknowledging that gender inequality extends from the boardroom to the bedroom. Drawing from work on the pleasure gap at sexual debut, and sexual conditioning in nonhuman animals, it asks whether gender differences in sexual response still arise when women’s first sexual encounters are as rewarding as men’s. Diana’s other projects focus, broadly, on the origins of sexual and gender diversity in women and queer people who experience sex-based marginalization. Outside the lab, Diana enjoys doing drag, and fusing science and art with Science Rendezvous, ROM Friday Night Live, and her own outreach initiatives, including the SRSF STEM Education Scholarship, Sexuality Interest Network (SIN), and SEXposium Science Outreach Conference. Email: d.peragine@utoronto.ca
Ashley Dhillon, Ph.D. Student. Ashley is a SSHRC CGS-M holder and is interested to investigate cross-cultural variations in gender development, primarily in the areas of child and adolescent gender identity, essentialist thinking about gender, and psychosocial outcomes of gender-nonbinary children. Her doctoral research also focuses on how gender-diverse and cisgender children in Thailand conceptualize and reason about gender, and how this might compare to children raised in Western, Education, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Email: ash.dhillon@mail.utoronto.ca
Daisy Hu, Ph.D. Student. Daisy is funded by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to conduct brain imagining studies investigating the biodevelopmental bases of sexual and gender diversity cross-culturally. Additionally, Daisy is interested in the evolutionary origins of same-sex sexuality. Email: daisy.hu@mail.utoronto.ca
Jordan Yang, Research Assistant. Jordan is assisting with a neuroimaging project at CAMH that investigates the relationship between gender identity, hormonal therapies, and brain changes over time. Jordan is also completing an M.Sc. degree in Cognitive Science at McMaster University.