My name is Christin Bowman, and I’m a critical social psychologist. I recently completed my PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY under the mentorship of Dr. Deborah Tolman (Spring, 2017).
My research focuses on human sexuality with a particular emphasis on how people make sense of their experiences. Through the use of multiple methods, including survey, experimental, and qualitative designs, I analyze people’s subjective meaning making to illuminate the inner workings of structures of social oppression, and the ever-present opportunities for resistance. My work addresses urgent topics in feminist social psychology, and is relentlessly intersectional both in its design and analysis.
I weave together three related lines of work in my program of research. First, I investigate women’s experiences of solitary masturbation as a part of my ongoing interest in the connections between sexual embodiment and women’s personal and political empowerment. In a second line of work, I examine adolescents’ experiences of sexuality, with a particular focus on the role of gender ideologies. In a third line of research, I investigate the sexualization of women and girls in the media, and the role that feminist activism might play in ameliorating negative outcomes. Under Deborah Tolman’s mentorship, I have also written about sexual embodiment, sex education, and engaging young women in feminist activism.
I have committed more than a decade of my career to classroom teaching, research mentoring, and public education initiatives. I am a strong proponent of education that extends beyond traditional lecture-based approaches. As the Director of Undergraduate Research at Hunter College, CUNY, I connected students to educational opportunities in renowned faculty members’ research labs, and as a research blogger, editor, and coordinator for the activist organizations SPARK and SexGenLab, I “translate” jargon-heavy scholarly research, making it accessible to the general public. My dedication to education has also influenced my research interests. Currently, as a research fellow in the Office of Research, Evaluation, and Program Support at CUNY, I am designing a predictive model to better understand which aspects of early college high school programs are related to immediate college enrollment.
This site houses additional information about me, including my complete CV, archives of my research blogs, and evaluations of my work. I am always looking for new avenues of collaboration, so please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Christin P. Bowman, PhD 