Faculty of Humanities: Faculty Fellowship for 2025–2026 University of Victoria Gender Studies

Dr. Cacchioni has been awarded the Humanity Faculty Fellowship for her research project titled 'Understandings and Experiences of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome' (PCOS). With parallels to the medical construction of hormonally-based intersex conditions, PCOS is an endocrine metabolic disorder marked by so-called ‘androgen excess’ in people assigned female at birth. The constellation of symptoms that comprise PCOS are varying combinations of infertility, weight gain, acne, hirsutism, and male patterned baldness. Medical treatment protocols for PCOS targets androgen levels, assuming women patients will desire regular ovulation and menstruation, reliable fertility, a low body mass index, clear skin, and relative hairlessness. According to medical literature, this diagnosis affects between ‘4 to 10% of women globally.'

While biomedical research on PCOS has been published throughout the past century, peer reviewed scholarly works focused on understandings and experiences of PCOS were non-existent until the early 2000s. Since then, even those published from a feminist perspective typically focus on white heterosexual women who report PCOS as an affront to their femininity. Informed by intersectional feminist scholarship, queer theory, and trans theoretical work, this research will address the gaps in existing research, with a particular emphasis on how PCOS is understood and experienced across different axes of identity. Like her past research on ‘Female Sexual Dysfunction,’ this research sheds further light on the affective labour of white, heteronormative ideals and the possibilities and limits of bodily acceptance in a world rife with stigma and its material consequences.