Interdisciplinary study of human sexuality, gender, and sex: this research will help us to better understand sexuality as an important phenomena in people鈥檚 lives and our culture.
![[Sari van Anders]](/vpr/sites/vprwww/files/uploaded_images/researchers/Van-Andrers-Sari-700x700.jpg)
Defining New Fields: Social Neuroendocrinology
Sari鈥 Michelle 鈥痸an 鈥疉nders is a leader in feminist bioscience and sex research. Her award-winning research spans across natural, social and health sciences, to the arts, and humanities. The research contributes to our understandings of sexual phenomena like orgasm, fantasy, desire, and pornography 鈥 as well as larger related constructs like gender and sexual diversity.
Having led and established the new field of 鈥渟ocial neuroendocrinology,鈥 van Anders is asking new groundbreaking questions. For example, van Anders is researching how gendered experiences modulate testosterone, how testosterone responds when a person marginalizes others, and why certain sexual phenomena change a person鈥檚 hormones and immunity.
With the creation of sexual configurations theory, van Anders鈥 work will next explore how the experiences of those from sexual and gender minorities and majorities can better be thought about and understood 鈥 in science, and in our lives.