Conor Lanning

Conor Lanning (he/him/his) is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. His primary research interest centers on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the social and political effects of the diagnosis for mental health care providers, trans people, and medical institutions more broadly. He uses approaches from sociocultural anthropology, linguistics and linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and social semiotics to understand how mental health providers and service users negotiate cissexist histories and political movements to engage in a process of care. Additionally, he is interested in the ways that mental health care providers have adapted to the current political climate, using language and diagnostic processes to potentially contest the discourses of cissexism within and outside of clinical walls.