I am a sociologist who researches sex tech developments to answer questions about individualism, sexuality, gender, and technology. In my work I use digital ethnographic, interview, content analysis, and mixed-methods to understand how new trends in sex tech challenge and reproduce the status quo. My work has covered a range of issues: dating apps, love and sex dolls, sex doll brothels, Reddit forums, and the global sex tech industry.
My research provides empirically driven analyses of emergent sex practices in contemporary society. Whether it is people looking for love (dating apps), or people who have moved on from human love (love and sex dolls), I am curious as to how and why people use technology to fulfill sexual and emotional desires. In our digital age, it is unsurprising that we use technology for our passions (as we use technology for everything else, more or less). And yet, persistent cultural anxieties and fears surround the
In both my research and teaching, I strive for understanding complexity. I embrace contradiction as an opportunity for examining the puzzles of social life. Take, for example, dating apps. While dating apps introduce new possibilities by expanding people’s social networks, which can benefit people looking for specific types of partners that are less easy to find (think, polyamorous-friendly people across disparate rural spaces), they are also exhausting as the number of “successful” matches is low. Not only