Katalin Zsiga

Katalin Zsiga is a PhD student in the Department of International Development. Katalin is currently working on her PhD in Development Studies with reference to Emerging Economies. She completed her MSc in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and holds a BA in Applied Psychology and Sociology from the University of Brighton.

Her MSc dissertation discussed masculinity and hypersexuality in relation to the subculture of Pickup Artists. She also received the Tony Gale Prize from the British Psychological Society for her undergraduate dissertation on heterosexual women’s negotiation of their non-reciprocated sexual pleasure – a study on which her current research is based.

With over 15 years of management experience in the education and development sectors, within various settings around the world, Katalin has broad experience in charity programme management and worked with disadvantaged communities in Africa, China, Cambodia, and Indonesia.

Research

Thesis title: 'The politics of sexual pleasure: Sex and empowerment in Peru'

Katalin's research seeks to politicize women’s sexual experiences by examining the processes that influence women’s perceptions of their own sexual experiences in relation to pleasure, sexual violence, and empowerment.

Empirically, her thesis analyses the experiences of young women in Lima, Peru. Building on feminist authors who argued that women’s sexual agency must be the starting point toward gender equality and that scrutinizing heterosex is a crucial mode of destabilizing patriarchal power structures, and the growing scholarship in international development that have connected up sexual pleasure and international development, the entry point for this thesis is the premise that finding the pleasure in women’s experiences may inspire new strategies to empower and bring about positive change in women’s lives.   

PhD supervision

• Principal supervisor: Jelke Boesten
• Secondary supervisor: Andrea Cornwall

Further details

See Katalin's research profile