Associate Professor
Human Sexuality
School of Consciousness and Transformation
Ph.D., University of Memphis (TN)
M.A., University of Hagen, Hagen (GER); M.A., Utrecht University, Utrecht (NL)
M.Ed., Fontys University, Tilburg (NL)
Katharina Azim is a core faculty member in the Ph.D. Program in Human Sexuality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She received her Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Memphis. Before that, she earned Master’s degrees in education from Utrecht University, Fontys University in Tilburg, and University of Hagen.
Katharina’s current research centers around women’s reproductive health, agency, and rights in the United States, and specifically on pelvic health and experiences of painful sexual intercourse. Her most recent empirical work focuses on how women's experiences of sexuality and health are influenced by various institutions, like the medical system, religion, education, etc. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Sexual Medicine, Culture, Health, and Sexuality, and Women and Birth. Katharina’s second line of research examines the ways in which ethnic, racial identities, and nationalities shape transnational experiences for MENA and Arab women at the intersection of gender and religion.
Katharina is also a founding member of the Motherscholar Collective, an interdisciplinary coalition of around 90 academic mothers who created a feminist, participatory research agenda around the intersectional experiences of parenting young children during the COVID-19 pandemic.