Conference: Reimagining Sex Education: Bodies, Norms, and New Narratives of Sexuality

24 June 2026 (10:00 – 17:30)

Sex education is never neutral. It is shaped by culture, power, and absence – by what and by who it is taught and what is withheld. Across generations, people have learned about bodies, gender, desire, and intimacy through classrooms, media, medicine, peers, and personal experience. Yet many stories remain untold, many bodies unrepresented, and many forms of knowledge marginalized.

Reimagining Sex Education: Bodies, Norms, and New Narratives of Sexuality invites contributors to critically engage with the history and culture of sex education to discover how it has been constructed and thus might be transformed. In this context the term “sex education” covers a broad spectrum of knowledge about gender and sex, disseminated and taught through various institutions and platforms such as schools, public communication, social media, activism, and the health system, and directed toward a wide range of audiences.

This one-day interdisciplinary conference takes place in connection with the exhibition SEX.ED. – krop, køn og idealer (SEX.ED. – body, gender and ideals) at KØN – Gender Museum Denmark. The exhibition encompasses all phases of life, from puberty to ageing, exploring how knowledge, myths, and norms shape understandings of bodies and sexuality. Through historical artefacts, personal narratives, and contemporary perspectives, it asks: What did we learn? What was missing? And what do we need now?

Featuring objects ranging from contraceptives and menstrual products to youth magazines, sex toys, silicone implants and penis extenders, the exhibition foregrounds both the material culture and lived experiences of sex education. It highlights how ideals of the “normal” body and of “real” masculinity and femininity have been produced, circulated, and contested.

The conference extends these reflections into a shared academic, artistic, and public forum. We seek contributions that challenge dominant narratives, foreground embodied knowledge, and open new possibilities for understanding sexuality across time, cultures, and identities.

PRACTICAL

Price: 560 DKK – Students: 230 DKK – including conference fee, lunch, coffee/tea. Buy your ticket here

PROGRAM

10:00 – 10:30 Arrival, Check – In (Coffee and Tea in Café)

10:30 – 10:45 Opening Speech by Director Karen Friis

10:45 – 11:15 Keynote Lecture: Teaching disability sex to every body – Nana-Margrethe Christensen

11:15 – 11:30 Q&A

11:30 – 11:45 Break

Presentations:

11:45 – 12:00 The feminist manifesto as pedagogical and activist tool in sex education – Kira Skovbo Moser

12:00 – 12:15 Improvising two-way education: participatory theatre as a method for exploring doctor-patient communication in PMOS – Júlia Karpova and Agata Hoffmann

12:15 – 12:30 Guilt & Shame: Bodily Conditioning, Menstruation, and Methodologies of Artistic Inquiry and Non-Extractive Research – Fausta Noreikaitė

12:30 – 12:45  Menstruation and Pedagogical Worlding: Towards a Feminist New Materialist Menstrual Pedagogy – Lise Ulrik Andreasen

12:45 – 13:15 Q&A

13:15 – 14:00 Lunch at KØN Café

Presentations:

14:00 – 14:15  After contraception? Reorganizing relations in pregnancy prevention and -release – Anne Nørkjær Bang

14:15 – 14:30 Ordering comprehensive sexuality education: A textual fieldwork exploring the ontological politics of the scholarly literature – Nina Langer Primdahl

14:30 – 14:45 Young digital sexuality – Petrine Lynge

14:45 – 15:00 Who’s afraid of sexual difference? Sex and professionalism – Kirsten Hyldgaard

15:00 – 15:30 Q&A

15:30 – 15:45 Break

15:45 – 16:45 Panel Discussion: Analyzing representations of Sex, Power, and Ambivalence: Objects, Literature, and Fictionality + Q&A – Signe Uldbjerg, Anna Ramsing Lindhardtsen and Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen

16:45 – 17:00 Closing Speech + Presentation of SEX.ED Exhibition

17:00 – 18:00 Guided Tour of Exhibition SEX.ED by Signe Uldbjerg