Yael is a doctoral candidate in the Health Behavior program with the school of Public Health. She identifies as a queer bilingual non-monogamous neurodivergent Nuyorican (Puerto Rican from NYC) Jewish woman. Yael uses critical theories (critical race theory, LatCrit, C-REIL, etc.) and community-centered research designs. She has been part of Race and Relationships’ N-SPiRE and RESPEC+ projects as part of study design, recruitment, interviewer, coder, analysis, and manuscript preparation. She has also been part of teams housed at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion and is lead for the Body, Belonging, Race, Fetishization, and Sex study (BBRFS).
Yael’s research explores the nuances of identity and power in work centered around sex, consent, desire, pleasure, embodiment, agency, and partnering styles, particularly within Latine populations. Currently, she is focusing on the BBRFS study which explores two questions:
(1) How are Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican women (and their descendants) that are living in the United States experiencing socialization around their bodies, sexualization, and fetishization and how does this vary by race/phenotype?
(2) How do social models related to body & belonging (Latinidad, colorism, race, tropicalism, local culture, etc.) influence the ways in which Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican women who have been objectified experience their sexual experiences?
Yael plans to expand this work to the whole Latine diaspora, including all genders and countries, and to create, with community, a virtual interactive museum where these stories can live and be shared. In addition to research, Yael is an intimacy, identity, relationships, and sex educator, coach, and writer.
