Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM)
The Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM) is a regional resource center based at the Institute of Social Medicine (IMS), University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Created in 2002 as a transformation of the Program on Gender, Sexuality and Health, created in 1993 within the same academic unit, CLAM gathers UERJ faculty, graduate students, undergraduate trainees and associate researchers, and networks with feminist and gender and sexuality researchers, activists and professionals throughout Brazil and Latin America, mainly by means of its two online media sources: its website/newsletter www.clam.org.br and its open-access academic journal www.sexualidadsaludysociedad.org. As gender and sexuality scholars, our teaching, research, dissemination work and partnerships favor a human rights perspective and intersectional approaches to different forms of social inequality.
This research was undertaken by Horacio Sívori, PhD, IMS professor, and Bruno Zilli, PhD, associate researcher, both social anthropologists in the field of sexuality studies. At different stages, Elaine Rabello, PhD, digital media researcher and formerly IMS professor, collaborated with digital research design; Tatiana de Laai, Phd, was workshop rapporteur and social media ethnographer; and Fabio Gouveia, PhD, Fiocruz researcher and faculty, curated our digital datasets. Jandira Queiroz, Brazilian civil society coordinator at Amnesty International, coordinated our workshop with prospective academic and activist partners. Maria Leão, PhD candidate at IMS, helped with the literature review. Roxana Bassi, with the APC tech team, developed our LimeSurvey instrument and stored its dataset; and Eliane De Paula, PhD, performed the statistical analysis of survey results. Silvia Aguião, PhD, CLAM and AFRO/CEBRAP researcher, acted as online interviewer.
While our earlier research had addressed digital network engagement with sexuality politics, our approach to feminist internet research began in 2008 when, in partnership with the Sexuality Policy Watch, we conducted a Brazilian case study as part of the APC WRP EROTICS project. Both those partnerships and the FIRN framework have been key at shaping our intellectual and institutional investments, reflection and engagement with gender, sex politics and the internet.