Reflecting on bisexual identities and relationships: Nikki Hayfield in conversation with Annukka Lahti

Abstract

Annukka Lahti is a Doctoral Student (Gender Studies) in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland1. Before starting her doctoral studies, she taught psychology at The Open University of the University of Jyväskylä. In her Doctoral studies, she explores how bisexuality – which is persistently culturally associated with temporariness, multiple partners and promiscuity – fits, fights and expands the normative cultural understandings of relationships. Her research specifically examines how a sample of Finnish bisexual women and their (ex-)partners of various genders negotiate bisexuality in their relationships, as psychosocial subjects. She considers how intersecting cultural constructions of relationships, genders and (bi)sexualities shape those negotiations and analyses her interview data through a psychosocial lens. Her analysis shows that negotiations around bisexuality and relationships are made not only through discursive regulation, but are also shaped in interaction with affective, non-rational psychic dimensions of being in a relationship. She has recently published on bisexual women’s and their partners’ relationships in Feminism & Psychology and has a number of papers under review. She is currently finishing her dissertation and plans to start her post-doctoral research project focusing on the separation experiences of LGBTIQ persons. Nikki Hayfield had an email discussion with Annukka over the summer to find out more about her research and interest in bisexuality.