Traumatic brain injury affects elderly people as well as kids under 19 years. Given that brain injury affects motor skills and emotions, a medical program needed to know how to assist young people with brain injuries, as well as their families, as the youth transition into adulthood. The medical team sought input through a qualitative study.

Studying sexuality has always been fraught with societal push-back. The story of other scientific innovations being rejected and ultimately adopted, such as with evolution, is widely celebrated as a triumph over religiously motivated politics. Yet the social sciences have repeatedly faced similar struggles and continue to do so today, but these stories are lesser known.

Erving Goffman’s theory of Dramaturgy draws on metaphors from stage acting to describe the public and private work that individuals maintain in their social interactions with other people. “Front stage” work is the face you show to people in different social contexts. Sometimes our modes of interaction will be different in different situations and with different groups (or “audiences”). Backstage work is how we manage our identities and emotions when we’re alone. We can work on our “performance” or rethink the behaviour we want to reflect to others.