Biography

Katharina is a reproductive health scholar activist and Associate Professor in the Human Sexuality PhD Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her current research centers around women’s experiences of painful sexual intercourse specifically, and the ways various institutions, such as the medical system, religion, and education, inform reproductive agency and rights in the USA more broadly. Her 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 100 academic mothers who created a feminist, participatory research agenda around the intersectional experiences of parenting young children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research Interests

Reproductive health and justice; Biopsychosocial factors of painful sex; MENA/Arab+ women ethnic and racial identities; Conceptions of Mother+hood

Education

Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (University of Memphis, TN)

M.A. in Education & Media (University of Hagen, Germany)

M.A. English Language Education & Communication (Utrecht University, Netherlands)

M.Ed. German Language Education and Culture (Fontys University, Tilburg, Netherlands)

Awards & Distinctions

2019-SUNY at Buffalo Gender Institute Research Grant; PI; Study title "College Women’s Pelvic Health and Sexuality;" 2017-Editorial Board’s Invited Article, Journal of Midwifery Science, “She said, she said: Interruptive narratives of pregnancy and childbirth;” 2016-Editor’s Choice, Featured Article, Women & Birth, “At pains to consent: A narrative inquiry into women’s attempts of natural childbirth;” 2015-Outstanding Graduate Award in Educational Psychology

Courses

Global Sexualities; Methodology II

Publications

Selected publications: Azim, K. A., Happel-Parkins, A., Moses, A. & Haardörfer, R. (In Press). Racialized differences across experiences and measurements of pain in GPPPD. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsxmed/qdac028

Azim, K. A., & Salem, W. M. (2022). The liminality of multinational Muslim motherscholaring during COVID-19: A feminist narrative inquiry. Peabody Journal of Education, 97(2), 132-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2022.2054634

Lim, S. R., Cerdeña J. P., Azim, K. A., & Wagner, K. (2022). Motherscholars with disabilities: Surmounting structural adversity during COVID-19. S. M. McCarther (Ed.), American Educational History Journal. Information Age Publishing

Motherscholar Collective, Myles-Baltzly, C. C., Ho, H. K., Richardson, I., Greene-Rooks, J., Azim, K. A., Frazier, K. E., Campbell-Obaid, M., Eilert, M., & Lim S. R. (2021). 

Transformative collaborations: How a motherscholar research collective survived and thrived during COVID-19. International Perspectives in Psychology, 10(4), 225-242. https://doi.org/10.1027/2157-3891/a000029

Azim, K. A., Happel-Parkins, A., Moses, A. & Haardörfer, R. (2021). Exploring relationships between genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder, sex guilt, and religiosity among college women in the U.S. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 18(4), 770-782. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2021.02.003

Azim, K. A., Happel-Parkins, A., & Moses, A. (2021). Epistles of dyspareunia: Storying Christian women’s experiences of painful sex. Culture, Health, & Sexuality, 23, 644-658. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2020.1718759

Human Sexuality Department