Lauren Justice
Members of UW-Madison’s Trans Research Lab (left to right) Sidra Dillard, Ben Andert, director Stephanie Budge, and Morgan Sinnard outside the Education Building.
After graduating from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, Sidra Dillard wanted to continue studying, and hoped to focus future research on transgender-related topics.
This, unfortunately, left few choices.
“I was talking to my psychology advisor in my undergrad who did research in some LGBT fields, not so much the T, though, and I asked her, ‘How do I apply for graduate school?’ She said, ‘Really apply for places that have faculty that are interested in what you’re interested in.’ That didn’t give me a lot of options.”
So Dillard made a short list of institutions that fit that description, and UW-Madison, home to the largest transgender research lab in the nation, ended up at the top of the list.
The UW-Madison’s Trans Research Lab has no physical space, a budget that consists only of grant money, and it only recently launched a website. Nevertheless, the lab is at the forefront of transgender studies and is attracting researchers to the university.
“What we’re doing seems to be pretty unique,” says Stephanie Budge, director of the Trans Research Lab and professor in UW-Madison’s counseling psychology department. “There are only five other professors in the country in psychology who are really specializing in this work.”
Elliot Tebbe is one of those specialists. A University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor of educational psychology, he calls Budge a “pioneer.”
“[The lab] is changing the culture of the field,” Tebbe says. “When you have such a large, productive research lab that is doing really good work, coming up with new models that are helpful in training, that will happen.”
Both students and community members can volunteer at the lab and help with research. And although the lab has no regular schedule or location, it’s nevertheless generated significant interest. Budge gets emails every month from people interested in working there.
This word-of-mouth has led to a steady growth in membership since the lab started a few years ago. There are currently about 20 unpaid volunteer members, mostly students, doing research at the lab, Budge says. She hopes this number will continue to grow.
The lab conducts what Budge describes as “affirmative research.”
In 2016, the lab published research on the relationship between geographic location and level of anxiety and depression among transgender populations in America. Morgan Sinnard — a doctoral student in the counseling psychology department at UW and one of the authors of the research — says a review of survey data found that transgender people had the highest rates of anxiety in Southwestern states, such as Texas and Arkansas.
“It was a significantly higher difference than almost every other division of the U.S. So, we thought maybe this was because of social differences in attitudes toward trans people, cultural differences,” Sinnard says. “But, ultimately, we can’t know because we didn’t compare it to a control group.”
The lab is now focusing on studying the use of psychotherapy for transgender people — Budge says there’s little research in this area — with the aim of improving therapy practices.
To do this, the lab will monitor and record therapy sessions with transgender people conducted by members of the counseling psychology department, including clinical psychologists and doctoral students. The lab hopes to recruit 30 people to have their therapy monitored. Researchers will then analyze the sessions, noting and cataloguing what problems and struggles people experience and how they respond to therapy.
Budge has been researching transgender-related issues for more than a decade. In 2011, she founded the TSTAR lab at the University of Louisville — which she says was the first-ever transgender-focused research lab in psychology. At the time, she was mainly working to figure out what problems the transgender community faces. The little research being done in the area, Budge says, was often “really bad and really offensive,” with researchers often using outdated and offensive terminology.
After Budge came to UW-Madison in 2014, TSTAR severed its ties with the university. It now exists as a community group.
UW-Madison’s Trans Research Lab doesn’t only work on research. Members of the lab aren’t shy about their advocacy and activism — something that is unusual in research.
Budge isn’t concerned about tainting the lab’s work or how some might view it as biased. “I think all research is biased in some way, shape or form. It’s just what you do to ensure that all of that is out on the table,” Budge says. “We’re really transparent about what we do, so I’m not really concerned about [our work coming across as biased].”
She says she believes in the “rigor of their approach” and that there is nothing the lab does “that is not based in science.”
Aside from its research, lab members meet once a week to engage in activism. In some meetings, members write letters to elected officials on issues such as health care and non-discrimination. Lab researchers met two UW-Madison employees who sued the state and the UW System over their refusal to pay for gender reassignment surgery, Budge says. The lab also does educational training on transgender issues for community groups and organizations.
Dillard wanted to work with Budge, in part because Budge understands the importance of activism and practicing self-care.
“Stephanie wouldn’t be the leader of the lab that she is if she wasn’t so cognizant of how social events and political events impact the people of the lab,” Dillard says.
After just a few years of steady growth, UW-Madison’s lab has served as a model for similar, smaller labs throughout the country.
Jayvien McNeill, now a senior at the California State University, interned for UW-Madison’s Trans Research Lab this summer. Without the lab, McNeill never would have come to Wisconsin, due to “how white” the campus is.
But after completing the internship, McNeill is now hoping to export what makes UW-Madison’s trans research lab so successful back to California’s lab, a small space that has roughly five active student-researchers.
“When I [came to Madison], I realized this is totally unique,” McNeill says. “I definitely think that there is nothing like what is happening with [UW-Madison’s] Trans Research Lab. It’s influencing all of my work decisions now.”
Dillard, who applied to UW-Madison’s counseling psychology department in 2015, is now a second-year master’s student in the program.
“I came here because Stephanie was here, first and foremost,” says Dillard, who identifies as a transmasculine nonbinary individual. “I think now the lab is also nice for me because I think it’s the biggest gathering of queer and trans folks that I have in Madison. It gives me the opportunity to spend more time with queer and trans folks.”
Following years of research and data collection into psychology-related issues, Budge says the problems facing the transgender community are just now coming into focus, and she’s hoping the lab will help address them.
“Trans people tend to experience more depression, anxiety, suicidality,” Budge says. “Now that the health disparity is set,” she adds, “what do we do about that?
Editor's note: This article originally stated that 30 people have agreed to have their therapy sessions monitored by the lab. The lab has not yet started recruiting people for the study, but the goal is to monitor 30 people's sessions.
