Diana Peragine

Diana studies sexual development through a biopsychosocial lens, asking how sexual inequality is written on the body. Her Masters research used an animal model with the strictest social hierarchy among mammals to reveal the neurohormonal pathway by which social marginalization can block sexual maturation. Her Ph.D. research examined 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 postdoctoral projects focus, broadly, on the origins of sexual and gender diversity in women and queer people who experience sex-based marginalization. Diana brings this expertise to the classroom at the University of Toronto, where she teaches developmental, cross-cultural, and neuropsychology.