Research & Scholarship

Dr Pani Farvid is an Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology. She joined The New School in 2019 from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, where she developed successful teaching and research programs, as well as a wide-ranging media profile addressing social and psychological issues.
Dr Farvid works with interdisciplinary research teams, community organizations and policy makers across the globe. She draws on mixed-methods, discursive methods, as well as new and emerging methodologies. She runs  The SexTech Lab  at The New School.  
Her research interests include examining the intersection of gender, sexuality, power, culture, technology and identity and is typically underpinned by theories of social justice and social change. Dr Farvid’s work focuses on promoting egalitarianism within hetero/sexuality as well as gender equality more broadly. Her work seeks to identify forms of contemporary inequality, with a view to change such power relations through individual, social or policy interventions.
She has previously worked on projects examining heterosexual casual sex, the New Zealand sex industry (men who buy sex, online sex work/”camming”), and technologically mediated intimacies (via Tinder, online dating and sugar dating). A key interest is also gender equality within the Middle-East.
Her current research/supervision interests span the following:

• Working with marginalized populations (e.g., refugees, immigrants, non-binary, LGBTQI+, ethnic/racial minorities) in order to foster equity and social justice.
• Diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
• The primary prevention of gender inequality and sexism (including gender-based/sexual violence)
• Emerging social issues in gender, sexuality, technology and intimacy (e.g., mobile dating, online sex work, “sugar dating”, AI and human intimacies, robot sex).
• The politics of Sex Work
• Domestic sex trafficking (NZ, US and UK)
• Applied ethics and moral psychology (as applied to the online domain)
• Contemporary shifts in intimate life (within the West and within Iran)
• Methodological developments in psychology (e.g., visual motif analysis, posthuman critical theory and psychology in conversation)
• She is a regular media commentator on issues related to gender, sexuality, gender equality and sexism, as well other other more general psychological interests, such as sleep, causes of violence in society and inter generational communication.