About the Bloggers
The bloggers here at re: Cycling are all members of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, however, their writing on this site does not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole. Posts and comments are the views of the individual authors.
Kati Bicknell (2012-2013) is the co-founder of Kindara, a company devoted to helping women achieve better results with their reproductive health by improving the technology around fertility charting. She had the idea for Kindara while working for TED.com in 2009. Kati’s training as a birth doula gives her a powerful commitment to make sure that women have access to safe, effective options to manage their health and fertility. Kati studied Visual Art at Bennington College, receiving her BA in 2002. She is currently training to become a Fertility Awareness Educator. In her free time she enjoys yoga, art, dance and learning Mandarin.
Chris Bobel [Associate Editor] (2009 – present) is an Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at University of Massachusetts-Boston. Her interests include social constructions of the body, women-centered social movements, including menstrual activism, and developments in feminist, gender, and queer theorizing. She is the author of The Paradox of Natural Mothering (2002, Temple), New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation (2010, Rutgers) and co-editor (with Samantha Kwan) of Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules, Challenging the Norms (2011, Vanderbilt).
Giovanna Chesler (2009 – 2010) is a filmmaker, media producer, and Assistant Professor in Communication Arts at Marymount Manhattan College. She directs and produces new media projects and documentary and narrative films addressing themes of the body, sexuality, and gender. You may have seen her film Period: The End of Menstruation?.
Paula Derry (2012 – 2014) is a health psychologist who works independently as Paula Derry Enterprises in Health Psychology. A researcher and theorist, her work on menopause spans explicating the normal course of menopause; psychotherapy, health, and adult-developmental issues; research ethics and analyses of methodologies. She currently is collaborating on research on chaos theory and the menstrual cycle and is interested, more broadly, in relationships between biology and culture. She is also a shiatsu bodywork practitioner. She is a member of the SMCR board and a former editor of the Society’s newsletter.
Heather Dillaway (2010 – present) is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology at Wayne State University. Her primary research project is an exploration of women’s experiences of menopause and midlife, although she also writes about aging, motherhood, and childbirth.
Mindy Erchull [Associate Editor] (2011- 2013) is an Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Mary Washington. Her research interests include objectification, feminism, psychological aspects of reproductive health, social psychology, health psychology, psychology of women, women’s health, social influence, and statistics and research methods.
Breanne Fahs (2012 – present ) is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University and a practicing clinical psychologist. Her recent book, Performing Sex: The Making and Unmaking of Women’s Erotic Lives, explores sexual quandaries like women faking orgasm, performative bisexuality, and women’s Viagra. She has also published pieces on sex during menstruation and women’s experiences with growing body hair in journals like Gender & Society and Feminism & Psychology. Learn more about Breanne and her work at her website, BreanneFahs.com.
Saniya Lee Ghanoui [Associate Editor] (2013-present) is a doctoral student at University of Illinois-Urbana.
Holly Grigg-Spall (2011, 2013-present) is a freelance writer with interests and expertise in birth control and women’s health, as well as in film and media. She blogs about risks and safety of the birth control pill and her own pill experience at Sweetening the Pill.
Chris Hitchcock (2009 – 2012) is a researcher at the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research at the University of British Columbia. Her current research interests include the analysis of normal changes with menstrual cycles and ovulation in regularly menstruating women, hot flushes and other changes in perimenopausal women, and the effects of progesterone on hot flushes and cardiovascular health in menopausal women. Most recently she has been reviewing the safety of extended use of oral contraceptives to suppress menstruation.
Alexandra Jacoby (2011 – 2013) is a self-taught artist and creator of vagina vérité®.
Elizabeth Kissling [Executive Editor] (2009 – 2014) is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and of Communication at Eastern Washington University. She began writing about menstruation and media when she completed a term paper about TSS and Rely tampons for her high school English class in 1981. Her book, Capitalizing on the Curse: The Business of Menstruation, was published by Lynne Rienner Publishers in 2006. More recently, she co-edited a special collection about menstruation and representation with Chris Bobel in 2011.
David Linton (2010 – present) is Professor of Communication Arts at Marymount Manhattan College. He is also Editor of the SMCR Newsletter and a member of the SMCR Board. His research focus is on media representations of the menstrual cycle as well as how women and men relate to one another around the presence of menstruation. In addition, he is the President of the New York State Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Laura Wershler (2009 – present) has volunteered and worked for pro-choice sexual and reproductive health organizations for 25 years. The former executive director of Sexual Health Access Alberta graduated in April 2011 from the one-year, post-graduate certificate in journalism program at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. She writes, speaks and comments on a wide range of issues related to sexual health and sexuality.
