Dr. Jennifer Mullan sits down with sexologist Dr. Zelaika Hepworth Clark Carnegie for a powerful conversation on decolonizing sexuality, reclaiming the erotic as power, and healing beyond Western frameworks. Together, they explore pleasure, trauma, ancestral wisdom, and the radical act of imagining new ways of being. This episode is an invitation to reconnect with your body, your joy, and your liberation.
Dr. Zelaika Hepworth Clarke Carnagie, PhD, MSW, MEd, is an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator and AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, as well as a loveologist, cultural and clinical sexologist, Africa-centered social worker, anti-racist sexuality educator, decolonial eroticologist, decolonizing autoethnographer, and consultant. Dr. Hepworth Clarke is the first Jamerican (Jamaican-American) to earn three degrees in Sexuality Studies from accredited universities in the United States: a Bachelor of Arts from NYU in Sexuality, Culture, and Oppression (2007); a Master of Education in Human Sexuality (2012); and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Human Sexuality (2015) from the Center for Human Sexuality Studies at Widener University.
Dr. Hepworth Clarke is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of Social Work. They are a graduate of the National Academy for African-Centered Social Work, the International School of Transnational Decolonial Black Feminism in Brazil, and the Decolonizing Knowledge and Power Summer School in Barcelona, Catalonia.
They co-founded the anti-racist decolonial sexuality studies program at Goddard College and co-created the Decolonial Sexual Attitude Restructuring/Reassessment (D-SAR), a sexuality training program that helps participants examine the impact of settler-colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy on sex, gender, and relational dynamics.
As the director of The Pluriversity LLC, Dr. Hepworth Clarke offers decolonial guidance services, love education, consulting, and counseling with a commitment to increasing sexual multiepistemic literacy, erotic sovereignty, and sensual justice. Their work centers communities of the African diaspora, along with kinky, non-monogamous, queer, gender-expansive, and erotically marginalized populations.
Dr. Hepworth Clarke’s approach integrates anti-erotophobic, anti-oppressive, and healing-centered approaches to support individuals and communities through transformative processes related to intimacy, eroticism, gender, sexuality, pleasure, and relationships.
More information can be found at www.zelaika.com