Student researchers
Adrian Dunkerson
Adrian Dunkerson (he/him) is a gay autistic trans man in the first year of his masters’ program in Sociology. With a focus on gay and queer transmasculinity and transmasculine embodiment, his work aims to centre trans joy, an often neglected but significant part of trans life that he believes is essential to disrupting the infantilizing and damage-centered narratives of transness in academia. The co-creation of knowledge between trans researchers and trans participants is also a vital component of his work. He is extremely interested in the counter-hegemonic potential and possible resistance against cisheteronormativity of the trans joy, intimacy, and love within transgender-for-transgender (T4T) transmasculine gay relationships, the subject of which will be the focus of his thesis. He is currently a research assistant for the Trans+ People in Canadian Federal Prisons Project and has been published once in The Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology, while his previous (undergraduate) research includes an honours thesis on transmasculinity and tattoos and a JCURA project on the parallels of anti-autistic ableism and transphobia.
Publications:
Oh! Based on Voice, Assigned Female at Birth: Transmasculine Voices and Gender Construction - The Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology
Şansal Güngör Gümüşpala
My research aims to describe gender conceptualizations and life experiences of nonbinary individuals in Turkey. To render visible the struggles and the problems faced by nonbinary people in Turkey, I believe that collecting first-hand experiences is essential. This is important to increase the visibility of nonbinary people, raise their voices, and show that they are not alone. My broader purpose in this study is to reflect on global gender issues in relation to my own culture as a nonbinary person who has lived in Turkey for 26 years. With the Turkish translation of my study, I aimed to work with LGBT+ organizations to support nonbinary individuals and reshape the common discourse around nonbinary issues.
Publications:
Forthcoming
Jamey Jesperson
Jamey Jesperson is a Vanier Scholar and PhD Candidate in History and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria. Trained in ethnohistorical and archival methods, Jamey studies Indigenous and colonial North America through a trans lens, with a focus on histories of trans Indigenous contact along the Pacific Coast. Jamey’s writing has received a growing number of awards, including the 2024 Gregory Sprague Prize, the 2023 Gender & History Graduate Student Essay Prize, and the 2022 Rees Davies Prize for “best MA dissertation in the UK.” Through oral history, ‘storywork’ collaboration with Two-Spirit Knowledge Keeper Saylesh Wesley, Jamey’s dissertation endeavors to re-story trans Indigenous lives and worlds in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the nineteenth century. Her writing can be found, or is forthcoming, in History Workshop, Spectator, Gender & History, The Graduate History Review, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and more.
Publications:
Trans Histories by Trans Historians: Special Issue Editors’ Intro - Graduate History Review
Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-Membering Trans Feminine Life & Death in New Spain, 1604-1821 - Gender & History
Book review of Female Husbands: A Trans History, by Jen Manion - Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Settler TransNationalism: The Colonial Politics of White Trans Passing on Stolen Land - Spectator
Honouring Trans Lives, Historicising Trans Death - History Workshop
Spencer Robinson
Spencer Marco Robinson (he/him) is a queer Thai American transman with a love for storytelling and the impact it has on ourselves and our communities. His academic work centers queer and transness, in particular from an intersectional, multidimensional lens in order to amplify racialized and neurodiverse queer/trans perspectives of which are often neglected. As an author-illustrator specializing in children’s picture books, he is also dedicated to creating stories in which underrepresented parts of our communities are able to see themselves. Marco finds importance in the “who” of storytelling: Who is it addressing? Who is writing it? Who is impacted by it? He reiterates that his positionality as a trans racialized scholar is essential when working in queer/trans and race studies; our identities can never truly be separate from our research when that work has a real-world impact. All in all, he hopes that his work encourages others to share their own stories and to explore outside of the normative narratives.
Publications:
Où sont les personnages LGBTQI+s en littérature jeunesse? - On ne compte pas pour du beurre
Un homme comme moi – l’importance de la création pour la communauté et la connexion - La Société francophone de Victoria
Leo Rutherford
Leo Rutherford is a trans activist and scholar whose work is focused on transgender health and gender-affirming care. He has worked on a number of research projects, including as a Research assistant for Trans PULSE Canada, and a Mitacs fellow for the Community-Based Research Centre’s Sex Now project. PROGRESS (Patient-Reported Outcomes of Genital Reconstruction and Experiences of Surgical Satisfaction) for metoidioplasty and phalloplasty was Leo’s dissertation project and the first of many more community-focused research project on the topic. Leo hopes his work creates much-needed and invaluable knowledge for the trans community about gender-affirming care. Leo’s research is funded by CIHR’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research Transition to Leadership award and Health Research BC.
Publications:
Misgendering and the health and wellbeing of nonbinary people in Canada - International Journal of Transgender Health
Impacts of COVID-19 on trans and non-binary people in Canada: a qualitative analysis of responses to a national survey - BMC Public Health