I am a researcher in pornography, sexual, public, and occupational health, & ethics

Portrait of Val: a white person with orange glasses, short bright red hair, and a floral button up shirt sitting in front of a bookshelf.

I study community health needs and practices. I am especially interested in sex exceptionalism, health as a form of respectability politics, and epistemological power. I also examine how the regulation of pornography by governments, payment processors, and online platforms—often done in the name of ‘health’—exerts control over what forms of sexuality and sexual labour can exist on the internet. My current scholarly home is as a postdoctoral fellow at the SHaG Lab.

I have 15+ years of experience working in various areas of the adult industry, and am board chair of PASS, a non-profit dedicated to porn performer health. I am on the Ethical Capital Partners advisory board. Community groups I have organized with include Queer Between the Covers, AIDS Community Care Montreal, and Safe Harbour Outreach Project. My research and writing focuses on occupational health and labour issues in porn and sex work, sexual and public health policy, and research methods and ethics. Several media outlets have covered my work, and I lecture to undergraduate and graduate classes on public health ethics and equity, sexual health and pornography, intersectionality in healthcare, and sex worker rights. While some previous work does not reflect this, I use they/them pronouns in English et le pronom iel avec les accords masculin en français.

I’m also an avid zine maker and love a good saddle stapler.