Education professor’s work centers Black women’s voices in sexual health research

Shemeka Thorpe, PhD, an assistant professor in the College of Education, is reframing sexual-health research by explicitly centering Black women’s voices and lived experiences rather than treating them as peripheral or only in a risk-perspective.

Her work is described as “sex positive” rather than deficit-based — exploring not just risk and disease (e.g., STIs, pregnancy) but deeper dimensions like sexual pleasure, sexual pain, and patient-provider communication in the context of racial stressors and structural oppression.

One of her flagship projects, the “Pain and Pleasure Study”, focuses on pre-menopausal Black women experiencing sexual pain (such as vaginismus or pain tied to fibroids) who have often felt unheard or dismissed by medical providers. She emphasizes that research only matters if the people whose lives it touches “understand what I’m saying or their voices are not being heard.”

Her broader goal: to make research relevant to community (not just academic) and to ensure that Black women have both agency and representation in sexual-health scholarship.

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