View To The U: Office Of The V.p., Research (utm)

On this episode of VIEW to the U, Professor Doug VanderLaan from UofT Mississauga's Department of Psychology talks about his work in the Biopsychosocial Investigations of Gender Laboratory – or the BIG lab for short - and this interview highlights Doug's work in gender diversity and gender expression. In the BIG lab, Doug has several lines of research running, including a Neuroimaging Study of Transgender Adolescents and Adults, which investigates brain development and unique brain characteristics among Canadian adolescents who experience gender dysphoria, which is “distress due to an incongruence between birth-assigned and experienced gender.” However, on today’s episode we cover some of the other programs of research in the BIG lab, notably Doug’s work investigating the variations of gender expression in ongoing cross-cultural studies with collaborators in Thailand and China, and some of the ways in which Thai society is unique in their gender expression, as well as his lab’s exploration of potential