Speakers

Keynote | Dr. Justin R. Garcia

Executive Director, Kinsey Institute

Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of Gender Studies

IU Bicentennial Professor, Indiana University

Evolutionary Biologist & Sex Researcher

Dr. Garcia's research focuses on the evolutionary foundations of variation in courtship, intimacy, and sexual behavior. He has co-authored dozens of academic articles and book chapters, and is co-author of Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior (Harvard University Press) and co-editor of Evolution’s Empress: Darwinian Perspectives on the Nature of Women (Oxford University Press). An award winning researcher and educator, Dr. Garcia has lent his expertise to a variety of industry partners, serving as a scientific consultant to K-Y Brand, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and others, and as an expert witness for the U.S. Department of Defense. Since 2010, he has been Scientific Advisor to the world’s largest relationship company, Match. His next book is titled The Intimate Animal.

Keynote | Dr. Markie L.C. Twist

Sexuality Educator, Sexologist,

Relationship Therapist, Authors, & International Speaker

Digisexuality Expert

Dr. Markie Louise Christianson Twist (she/her/they/them), Ph.D. is an award-winning sexuality educator, sexologist, relationship therapist, author and international speaker. Dr. Twist is the Program Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Sex Therapy Program, and Professor in the Human Development and Family Studies Department and Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. She is also a licensed marriage and family therapist and mental health counselor, as well as a clinical fellow and approved supervisor of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and a certified sexuality educator and supervisor through the American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists.

Dr. Twist is co-author of the book, The Internet Family: Technology in Couple and Family Relationships. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Sexual and Relationship Therapy: International Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Practice. In addition, Dr. Twist serves as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, as well as a session instructor at the University of Guelph. To learn more about Dr. Twist visit: drmarkie.com.

Keynote | Dr. Lara Karaian

Associate Professor, Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Carleton University

Sexuality, technology, representation,

bodily experience, and legal regulation.

Dr. Lara Karaian is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Karaian’s interdisciplinary research examines the intersections between sexuality, technology, representation, bodily experience, and legal regulation. Her current research project, “Sex/Crime in the Era of Immersive, Interactive, and Intelligent Technologies: A Study of Sextech, Affect and Law” (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council 2020-2025), examines how sextech—new technologies developed or applied to enhance, innovate, or disrupt human sexual experience—affects us, and how these affects sustain or destabilize legal and cultural constructions of ‘sex crime’.

Professor Karaian has served as an Expert Consultant for national and international studies on youths’ digital sexual expression (Australian Law Reform Committee’s International Consultation on Sexting; and the Canadian House of Commons’ Standing Committee’s study on Violence against Young Women and Girls), and as an expert consultant on numerous criminal cases involving youths’ distribution of intimate images. She is a Senior Fellow and blogger at Ryerson University’s Centre for Free Expression, and an editorial member of the journal Porn Studies. Her research has been published in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal; Theoretical Criminology; Law, Culture and the Humanities; Social and Legal Studies; and Crime Media Culture, among other publications.

Keynote | Davecat

Robosexual, iDollator, &

Advocate for artificial humans

Since the mid-1980s Davecat has been fascinated by and romantically attracted to gynoids; i.e, robots resembling human women. As gynoids are not yet available to the consumer market he decided to start with a RealDoll, and in 2000 he acquired the love of his life — Sidore Kuroneko, from Abyss Creations. Since then the two of them have been practically inseparable. For more than twenty years Davecat and Sidore, occasionally joined by Elena Vostrikova, Miss Winter, and Dyanne Bailey — three other Dolls from various manufacturers with which they share a polyamorous relationship — have been attempting to change the public’s perception of artificial companions for the better, through multiple podcast appearances, blog interviews, documentaries, and television segments. Davecat is also attempting to archive as much gynoid-related information and media as possible — androids, Dolls, and the people who love them - as he believes this particular subculture and lifestyle has not yet been properly documented.