Shemeka Thorpe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dr. Shemeka Thorpe (she/her) received her PhD in Community Health Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is an award winning sexuality educator and researcher. Her research interests are the sexual well-being and reproductive health of Black women using intimate justice and sex positive frameworks. With over a decade of experience as a sexuality educator, Dr. Thorpe strives to make research relevant for Black communities by integrating sex research and community health education through the use of social media. She is currently a Co-I on a project funded by NIMHD and co-led The Big Sex Study, a mixed method, community-based participatory action research project investigating Black sexual wellness. She is the PI of the Pain and Pleasure Study, the first study to focus on Black women’s sexual experiences of sexual pain. She was listed as Buzzfeed’s Top 25 Black sexologists to follow as well as voted #11 in the Top 100 Sexperts for 2021 list by PleazeMe. She is on the editorial board for the American Journal of Sexuality Education and The Journal of Sexual Wellness and Counseling Sexology.
Research Categories: Sexual Health, Human Sexuality, Health Education