My Journey to KC: Introducing Kristen Mark

Hello to all of our readers! I’m Kristen Mark, the newest addition to the blog team at Kinsey Confidential. I am looking forward to communicating with you all through this forum!

My Background

A question I often hear when speaking to new people in Bloomington is “where are you from?” I am Canadian (with an accent apparently), and since I’ll be communicating with all of you through writing rather than speaking, I’ll try my best to spell “behavior” and “color” YOUR way rather than MY way .

I moved here from the Toronto area in August to begin the Ph.D. journey. I didn’t know anyone in Indiana, but have managed to settle in fairly well thanks to a few amazing fellow Ph.D. students and a fantastic housemate! I did my Masters at the University of Guelph under the supervision of IU alumni, Dr. Robin Milhausen, where I learned a great deal of substantive and methodological material on human sexuality. I’ve been trained primarily in the field of psychology, so my mind works from that perspective, but my Masters program was interdisciplinary in nature.

My Current Life

I’m in the first year of my Ph.D. at Indiana University in Health Behavior. I’m also an Instructor in the Department of Applied Health Science. I taught Human Sexuality last semester, which was a wonderful experience, thanks to my enthusiastic students who were eager to learn all there is to know about SEX (who wouldn’t be?)! This semester, I’ll be teaching Personal Health, and I’m certain that my background in human sexuality will influence the the way I shape that course.

I conduct research at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, and all of my work focuses on enhancing the sexual experience. I research sexual quality. This encompasses anything from infidelity, to relationship/sexual satisfaction, to sexual pleasure, to sexual desire, arousal, and orgasm. Much of my work thus far has used a system approach to examine sexuality, allowing me to account for the relationship dynamics that may contribute to a sexual experience.

I’ve done some writing on topics of sexuality in the past, and am really looking forward to continuing that here. There are so many fascinating aspects of sex and sexuality to explore and I can’t think of a better outlet for my thoughts and observations. Here come the blogs….!