Dr. Kaitlynn Mendes
Dr. Kaitlynn Mendes (she/her) is the Canada Research Chair in Inequality and Gender at Western University. She has over a decade of experience researching young people’s use of digital technologies in their sexual lives and has led three funded projects in this area that contributed to academic knowledge in the United Kingdom and Canada. She has also mobilized this knowledge through accessible educational resources that have helped over 35,000 young people, 1,400 teachers, 200 schools, and 800 members of the public to better identify and respond to technology-facilitated forms of sexual violence and sexism.
In the Media
Both, M. (2023, May 24). Teens face so much online sexual harassment, term “cyberbullying” doesn’t capture true scope, expert says. CBC News.
Rivers, H. (2023, May 7). Are pandemic lockdowns, isolation fuelling increase in school violence? The London Free Press.
New legislation making those who engage in non-consensual sharing of intimate images and extortion could land someone on the National Sex Offender Registry. (2023, April 28). [Audio]. CHED Edmonton.
Professor Kaitlynn Mendes, sociologist at the University of Western Ontario, explains to Moore In The Morning how the pandemic may have made Canadian youth meaner and less empathetic. (2023, April 20). [Audio]. NEWSTALK1010.
Baig, F. (2023, April 19). Pandemic may have made Canadian youth less empathetic, meaner: Sociologists.Vancouver Sun.
Winsa, P. (2023, April 20). Kids can be mean, but did lockdown make them meaner? Toronto Star.
Baig, F. (2023, April 19). Sociologist says pandemic may have made Canadian youth less empathetic, meaner. Durham Radio News.
Luymes, G. (2023, March 29). Family of man killed outside Vancouver Starbucks pleads with public not to share video of knife attack. Vancouver Sun.
The Intimate Image Protection Act, B.C.’s new legislation which protects individuals whose intimate images were shared without their consent. (2023, March 8). [Audio]. CBC Radio Programs.
Pope. (2023, January 19). Here’s why sociologists believe crime is rising among GTHA teens. CHCH.
Previous Work
Horeck, T., Mendes, K., & Ringrose, J. (2021). Digital Defence in the Classroom: Developing Feminist School Guidance on Online Sexual Harassment for Under 18s. In The Palgrave Handbook of Gendered Violence and Technology.
Mendes, K., Horeck, T. & Ringrose, J. (2022) Sexual violence in contemporary educational contexts, Gender and Education. Gender and Education 34(2):129-133
Ringrose, J., Mendes, K., (2019) Digitised Narratives of Rape: Disclosing Sexual Violence Through Pain Memes. In Rape Narratives in Motion (pp. 171-197). Springer: London, UK. Green open access
Mendes, K., Keller, J., & Ringrose, J. (2019). Digitized narratives of sexual violence: Making sexual violence felt and known through digital disclosures. New Media & Society, 21(6), 1290–1310
Funding provided by:
