Department of Human Sexuality

The Human Sexuality department at CIIS draws professionals from many disciplines who are interested in advancing scholarship, practice, and public dialogue in sexuality studies. We provide an integral and critical view of human sexuality that brings together multiple perspectives, philosophies, research methods, and professional pathways. Students are invited to explore desire, intimacy, identity, gender and sexuality, cultural meaning, power and stigma, sexual response and practices, embodiment, reproduction, health, pleasure, and social change.

The rigorous coursework invites students to create new knowledge through a scholar-practitioner model that deepens both scholarly insight and real-world impact. Students develop research that remains grounded in the complexity of lived experience while contributing to conversations in education, clinical practice, public health, technology, advocacy, policy, community leadership, and cultural change.

The program’s model moves students toward grounded, contextual engagement with current issues in sexuality that have material impact on people’s lives.

• Black women’s sexual freedom 
• Sex trafficking amongst Indigenous girls and women in Canada 
• Clinical approaches to polyamory amongst millennials 
• Examining self-compassion techniques for women dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence and trauma

Together, this body of doctoral work demonstrates the program’s commitment to critical sexuality studies that is intellectually rigorous, socially engaged, methodologically diverse, and responsive to the urgent questions shaping sexuality, gender, embodiment, health, and human flourishing today.