About

I'm a researcher and academic based in Aotearoa New Zealand, working as a Rutherford Discovery Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Waikato.

My work focuses on transgender health and wellbeing, with a particular emphasis on the social determinants of health, human diversity, and the ways that policy, healthcare systems, and social environments shape people’s lives.

I lead Counting Ourselves — the Aotearoa New Zealand Trans and Non-binary Health Survey, one of the most comprehensive studies of trans health in the world. Over the past two decades I've published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers in the field of trans health and wellbeing, and collaborated with researchers and communities across New Zealand, Canada, and internationally.

I've served as Secretary and a Board Member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), founding President of the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), and as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Transgender Health. I was one of the authors of the 2022 WPATH Standards of Care, the primary international clinical guidance for trans health.

Alongside my research and professional roles, I am interested in broader questions about what the extraordinary diversity that runs through all of human life can tell us about health, wellbeing, and how people can live well.

Variations in Nature is a space for exploring these questions through research-informed writing and reflection. The questions my work touches on matter to a much wider audience than the people who read academic papers. I write here as a researcher who thinks they belong in wider conversation.