​The VOICES (Violence, Oppression, Identity, and Community-based ExperienceS) Lab is comprised of a collaborative team of researchers affiliated with Ball State University who are passionate about empirical inquiry into the lived realities of people with multiply marginalized identities and/or experiences. We are interested in improving our understanding of the challenges, joys, and factors that contribute to wellbeing among persons with two or more intersecting marginalizations. We use multiple methods in this lab and often engage in research which uses a mixture of methods (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, descriptive, experimental, quasi-experimental, surveys, open-ended response, participant interviews, etc.) to ensure we are comprehensively examining the unique experiences of the populations we work with and directly attending to perspectives of those with lived experience.

We are currently most focused on the population of plurisexual (i.e., multiple gender attracted) women in the U.S., with a special focus on plurisexual women of color, but are expanding our scope with multiple projects incorporating plurisexual people of all genders. The protective mechanism we are most focused on understanding at the moment is bipositivity, or positive regard toward plurisexual identities (e.g., bisexuality, pansexuality, etc.) and/or communities (e.g., bisexuals, pansexuals, etc.).