PLENARY SPEAKER

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Thursday, November 3rd at 5:15 PM PDT
Being in Good Relations: Knowledge Mobilization & Reconcilia(c)tion in Two-Spirit Health Research

Harlan Pruden (nēhiyo/First Nations Cree)
Indigenous Knowledge Translation Lead
Chee Mamuk, Indigenous Public Health Program
BC Center for Disease Control, Clinical Prevention Services

Harlan Pruden (nēhiyo/First Nations Cree), works with and for the Two-Spirit community locally, nationally and internationally. Currently, Harlan is the Indigenous Knowledge Translation Lead at Chee Mamuk, an Indigenous health program at BC Centre for Disease Control and is also a co-founder of the Two-Spirit Dry Lab, Turtle Island’s first research group or lab that exclusively focuses on Two-Spirit people, communities and/or experiences. Additionally, Harlan is the co-chair of the BCCDC’s COVID-19 Indigenous Knowledge Translation Working Group. As a Ph.D. student in the Faculity of Health Sciences at SFU, Harlan explore how (and if) Two-Spirit is facilitator of health and wellbeing for Indigenous sexual and/or gender peoples and communities. Harlan is also the Managing Editor of the TwoSpiritJournal.com and an Advisory Member for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Gender and Health. Before relocating to Vancouver in 2015, Harlan was co-founder and a Director of New York City community based organization, the NorthEast Two-Spirit Society and was a President Obama appointee to the US Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) and provided advice, information, and recommendations to the Secretary of Health & Human Services and the White House. (In December 2018, Harlan was (happily) fired and/or dismissed from PACHA by Mr. Trump via Fedex.)

Lupin Battersby, PhD
Knowledge Mobilization (KM) Manager
Simon Fraser University

Lupin Battersby, PhD, is SFU’s Knowledge Mobilization (KM) Manager. She is responsible for achieving the goals of the SFU KM Hub, including providing training, expert consultations, and recognition of KM work. Her KM fire was sparked almost 20 years ago when holding two contracts, one as a clinical counselor, the other a research assistant, she noticed first-hand the gap between research and practice. Since that time, she has worked in roles in and out of academia with a primary focus on the challenges and opportunities to mobilize research in various areas including health services, mental health, equity, housing, aging, and patient engagement. 

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PLENARY SPEAKER

Friday, November 4th at 9:00 AM PDT
Applying a Gender Equity Continuum Model to Transform Sexual and Reproductive Health Services, Programs, and Policies 

Arjee Restar, PhD, MPH

Department of Epidemiology

Center for Health Innovation and Policy Science (CHIPS)

University of Washington School of Public Health, Seattle, Washington

Arjee Restar (she/her) applies epidemiologic methods to behavioral, social, structural, and health services research and policy to address inequities in health outcomes and access, including sexual and reproductive health services, particularly as experienced by communities of transgender and nonbinary communities in the US and globally. She is expanding transgender health as a field by building research environments that produce high-quality evidence that speaks to the myriad of health priorities of transgender and nonbinary communities at-large, along with community stakeholders, scientists, scholars, and trainees who are also paving this field forward. This work includes advocating for institutional policies and practices that dismantle systems of oppression, inequality, and inequity.

DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT PLENARY SPEAKER

Saturday, November 5th at 9:00 AM PDT
Trans+ Research: From Obscurity to Everywhere

Aaron Devor, PhD, FSSSS, FSTLHE
Founder and Inaugural Chair in Transgender Studies
Founder and Subject Matter Expert, The Transgender Archives
Founder and Host, Moving Trans History Forward conferences
Professor, Sociology Department - University of Victoria

Dr. Aaron Devor, PhD, FSSSS, FSTLHE, is an internationally recognized leader in Transgender Studies who has been studying and teaching about transgender topics since the early 1980s. He established and holds the world’s first Chair in Transgender Studies; initiated and hosts the international, interdisciplinary Moving Trans History Forward conferences; and founded and is the subject matter expert for the world’s largest Transgender Archives. He has published widely on transgender topics, including as an author of four books and editor of one.

His 1989 book, Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality, was the first book to describe what would now be called nonbinary genders. His 1997, 720-page classic, FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society, was the second-ever book about trans men and the first based on non-clinical field research. Other influential works includes a widely-cited model of transgender identity development (2004) and the Lambda-Literary-Award-nominee The Transgender Archives: Foundations for the Future (2014) about the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. He has also been an author of versions of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care since 1999 (versions 6, 7, & 8), and has been guiding the translation of version 7 into world languages.

Devor’s opinions are frequently sought by the media, he has delivered more than 40 keynote and plenary addresses to audiences around the world, and he has received numerous awards for his research and advocacy work. He is a 3M national-award-winning teacher, a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and a member of the International Academy of Sex Research. Dr. Devor is a former Dean of Graduate Studies (2002-2012), and a professor of Sociology, at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada.

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PLENARY SPEAKER

Sunday, November 6th at 9:00 AM PST
Community-based Research in Underserved Populations: Kink and Consensual Non-monogamy 

Susan Wright, MA
Founder and Executive Director, National Coalition for Sexual Freedom

Susan Wright, MA (she/her) founded the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom in 1997, and currently serves as Executive Director. She also serves on the advocacy and community advisory committees for AASECT, the APA’s Division 44: Task Force on Consensual Non-monogamy, Kink Clinician Guidelines, and the Diverse Sexualities Research Education Institute. She currently chairs the Consent Counts Committee that worked with the American Law Institute on the revised Model Penal Code on Sexual Assault to create Section 213:10 Explicit Prior Permission for consent to kink. She also chaired NCSF’s successful DSM Revision Project which helped result in the consensual paraphilias being separated from the APA’s Paraphilic Disorders in the DSM-5 (2013).

More Plenary Sessions will be announced soon!
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