Mairead Sullivan

Associate Professor and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies Loyola Marymount University

Los Angeles CA

Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts

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Loyola Marymount University
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Biography

Mairead Sullivan is Associate Professor and Department Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Professor Sullivan’s research and teaching interests include feminist and queer theory, feminist methodologies, critical health studies, and identity based health politics. Dr. Sullivan spent a number of years working in women’s and LGBT public health before pursuing doctoral work. Sullivan holds an M.S.W. in Research Social Work
(emphasis in public health) from Boston University and a Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University.

My research interests reflect my multidisciplinary work in the fields of social and behavioral health sciences and humanities based gender and sexuality studies. My work is situated across the fields of feminist and queer theory, cultural studies, and critical health studies. I am particularly interested in understanding the traffic between on the ground health and social movements and critical theory. My current research is motivated by my experience as a Public Health researcher in the traditional social sciences. As a researcher in the field of social and behavioral health for lesbian and bisexual women after breast cancer, I found that the hard social sciences left little room to explore the meaning of the overlapping experiences of gender, sexuality, and illness. My current work bridges a traditionally empirical approach to the questions of the study of health with a humanistic concern with how we make meaning out of health, death, and identity.

In addition to being widely published in the field of LGBT public health, I am the author of the Lammy nominated and OSCLG book of the year award winning, Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger between Feminist and Queer (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). I am currently at work on a cultural study of the Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), tracing its cultural manifestations since the early 1980s, when the rise of HIV/AIDS, and the introduction of acyclovir, a drug for treating herpes, altered the disease’s social significance and signification.

Education

Emory University

Ph.D.

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Boston University

M.S.W.

2007

College of the Holy Cross

B.A.

2003

Social

Accomplishments

Outstanding Book of the Year 2023

Winner – Outstanding Book Award – Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender

Lambda Literary Awards - Nominee

2023-06-09

Shortlist – Lammy Award for LGBTQ+ Studies – Lambda Literary

LMU Ascending Scholar Award 2020

2020-05-01

The award is presented based on the scholarship, creative activity, and/or extramural funding of the faculty member while on the faculty of Loyola Marymount University. Scholarly work completed when the nominee was not on the LMU faculty is not formallyconsidered. Theworkhascontributedtoorinfluencedthefaculty member’sfieldofwork. Theworkhasgarneredexternalrecognitionsuchas honors, awards, or funding.

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Research Grants

Habitable Worlds: A Disability, Ethics, and AI Think Tank

Mellon Foundation

Our project addresses the ethical and social justice implications of AI technologies through the lens
of Disability Studies, which critically examines societal norms that define certain attributes as
disabilities, emphasizing accessibility and equity over medicalized “cures.” his three-year
initiative at Loyola Marymount University (LMU will bring together scholars, technologists, and
disability rights advocates to explore these critical questions. The project will award nine faculty
fellowships, develop nine community-based learning courses, and convene three annual
symposia, each focusing on themes like educational technology or privacy concerns related to
assistive technologies.

Advancing Digital Health Humanities

National Endowment for the Humanities/UC San Francisco

"The ADHHI intends to facilitate new insights into historical health data. Through the Institute’s programming, a select group of researchers will learn and apply methods that provide a humanistic context to understanding institutional, personal, and community responses to health matters. This approach includes examining the social, cultural, political, and economic impacts on individual and public health." - NEH.gov

Knowledge of AIDS Research Network

National Science Foundation

Knowledge of AIDS is an NSF Funded Research Community Development (RCD) project that seeks to form scholarly community for social scientific, humanistic, and socio-technical researchers of HIV/AIDS broadly situated within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Courses

WGST 1000: Introduction to Gender Studies

FYS 1000: Sex, Science, and Society

WGST 2200: Women's Health, Bodies, and Sexualities