Gender identity and origin of gender dysphoria in birth-assigned females – exploring links to chemical exposure, sexual- and neuronal development, social-cultural factors, and epigenetic changes

Main Supervisor: Joelle Ruegg
Assistant Supervisor: Fotis Papadopoulos, Gabriele Griffin, and Carl-Gustaf Bornehag.

What is your educational background?
I studied medicine and completed my residency in psychiatry.

Why did you apply to WOMHER's interdisciplinary graduate school?
As a psychiatrist, I do think that women's mental health is neglected in many aspects; and more dedicated research addressing the topic with different perspectives is demanded. I have always been interested in working in the field; and the opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary setting within WOMHER was rather appealing for me.

Tell us more about your research project?
The past years have seen a rapid increase in the numbers of children and adolescents identified as females at birth expressing gender dysphoria. However, the origin of gender dysphoria and its steep rise in recent years is unknown. The overall aim of my project is to better understand factors contributing to gender dysphoria by exploring biological and socio-cultural links between gender identity development and gender dysphoria, prenatal exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, neuropsychiatric, and epigenetic alterations in birth-assigned females.

What do you hope the impact of this project to be?
By identifying links between gender dysphoria and biological as well as socio-cultural factors, my project is expected to contribute to improved support for gender dysphoric birth-assigned females.