Sara McClelland, PhD

Ways to Contact Me

Email | 734-763-9618 | Academia.edu | Google Scholar

204 S. State St. Lane Hall, Room G255, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Overview

  • Professor, Women’s & Gender Studies Dept. and Psychology Dept. at the University of Michigan

  • PhD in Social/Personality Psychology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York (2009)

  • Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Michigan’s Society of Fellows (2009-2012)

Teaching

I teach courses on the Psychology of Women & Gender; Adolescent Sexuality; Feminist Methods; and Sex, Sexuality & Public Policy. For more information on the courses I teach, see the Teaching page.

Departmental Affiliations

I am a feminist psychologist who studies stigma and discrimination, with a focus on issues of reproductive justice and critical sexuality studies.

My research program focuses on studies of the intimate imagination and the expectations individuals develop for what they deserve to feel, experience, and avoid in their intimate lives.

This program builds on my earlier theoretical work on the concepts of intimate justice (McClelland, 2010) and thick desire (Fine & McClelland, 2006), which urge researchers to consider how social and political environments unevenly shape people's sexual lives. Much of my research empirically investigates how social environments shape what people come to think of as fair, equal, expected, and inevitable for themselves and others.

I often design research with translational aims, particularly in medicine, education, and policy. This has included: studying the role of racist stereotypes in abortion attitudes, the effects of abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education on young adults, and gaps in clinical care for women diagnosed with cancer. Examples of the impact my research has had include Peggy Orenstein's best-selling book, Girls & Sex and her TED talk, which relied on my theory of intimate justice to examine young women's sexual development.

A major focus of my research has been the development of “critical methods,” which are methods that look beyond traditional evaluation procedures to assess subtle information about the role of imagination, history, and political rights in psychological data. For examples, see my work on the self-anchored ladder, survey marginalia, item bank analysis, and research using Q methods.

For a description of some of the kind of research and questions I work with, see the following:

See this talk from the 2024 SPSSI Annual Conference for an overview of my most recent research on studying abortion attitudes.

This encyclopedia entry about my research (written by ProgressLab alum Leanna Papp & Harley Dutcher) offers an excellent overview of my work related to sex ed and critical sexuality studies:

Recent awards:

  • 2025 Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring in Qualitative Inquiry Award (APA Div 5)

  • 2025 Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award (University of Michigan)

  • 2023 The Lynn Stuart Weiss Lecturer (APA)

  • 2018 Committee on Women in Psychology Leadership Award from the American Psychological Association (APA)

  • 2018 Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award (APA Div 5)

  • 2016 Mary Walsh Roth Teaching the Psychology of Women Award (APA Div 35)

  • 2014 Michele Alexander Early Career Award for Scholarship and Service (SPSSI, APA Div 9)


Recent Press mentions can be found here

Recent ProgressLab Honors can be found here