Technology-mediated sexual interaction (TMSI) is a behavioural domain that captures the variety of ways that people engage in interpersonal exchanges of self-created, sexual material via communication technology. People report TMSI with romantic partners more than in other relationship contexts, yet there are few theoretically driven studies on people's motives for TMSI within romantic relationships. This lack of theoretical framing in the existing TMSI research makes it difficult to organize findings across studies in a coherent way, to explain particular phenomena, and to make connections between people's technology-mediated and in-person sexual experiences. The overarching goal of this dissertation was to improve knowledge about people's motives for engaging in TMSI with a committed romantic partner. To address this goal, I produced four articles which together allowed me to: (1) develop an evidence-based grounding for TMSI; (2) address limitations in current approaches to TMSI research; and (3) apply the approach-avoidance motivational framework to examine people's motives for and outcomes of engaging in TMSI with a committed romantic partner. In Article 1, I completed a systematic literature review on definitions, prevalence, and relationship context of sexting and cybersex (two of the most common TMSI activities). I found that researcher's conceptual definitions of sexting and cybersex are virtually indistinguishable and that the prevalence of sexting and cybersex was similar when researchers used comparable definitions. From these results, I conceptualized the TMSI behavioural domain. In Article 2, I described four common conceptual and measurement problems that arise when researchers focus on activities (i.e., sexting) rather than behaviours (i.e., TMSI). These problems include: (1) imprudent focus on the medium, (2) inconsistent conceptual definitions, (3) poor measurement practices, and (4) a lack of theoretical frameworks. I argue that the solutions to these problems require construct valid measures, theory-driven research, and a shift in focus away from sexting research and towards the TMSI behavioural domain. In Article 3, I used multi-grounded theory to guide qualitative analyses of 25 interviews focused on TMSI experiences and motives in current romantic partnerships. I found that participants described their TMSI motives in terms that aligned with the approach-avoidance motivational framework. In Article 4, I conducted two separate surveys to (1) develop a construct valid measure of people's approach and avoidance motives for TMSI with a current romantic partner (Article 4.1; N = 269) and (2) examine the extent to which people's approach and avoidance motives for TMSI with a romantic partner predicted well-being outcomes (Article 4.2; N = 459). I found that people's approach and avoidance motives predicted sexual, relationship, and life satisfaction through changes in dyadic sexual desire. Overall, this dissertation contributes to and extends knowledge about people's approach and avoidance TMSI motives by focusing on theoretically driven and construct valid research practices.

Breathing is not a common subject in feminist studies. Breathing Matters introduces this phenomenon as a forceful potentiality for feminist intersectional theories, politics, and social and environmental justice. By analyzing the material and discursive as well as the natural and cultural enactments of breath in black lung disease, phone sex work, and anxieties and panic attacks, Breathing Matters proposes a nonuniversalizing and politicized understanding of embodiment. In this approach, human bodies are onceptualized as agential actors of intersectional politics. Magdalena Górska argues that struggles for breath and for breathable lives are matters of differential forms of political practices in which vulnerable and quotidian corpomaterial and corpo-affective actions are constitutive of politics. Set in the context of feminist poststructuralist and new materialist and postconstructionist debates, Breathing Matters offers a discussion of human embodiment and agency reconfigured in a posthumanist manner. Its interdisciplinary analytical practice demonstrates that breathing is a phenomenon that is important to study from scientific, medical, political, environmental and social perspectives. / Andning är inte ett vanligt förekommande ämne inom feministiska studier. Breathing Matters introducerar detta fenomen som har en potential för feministiska intersektionella teorier, politik, social rättvisa och klimaträttvisa. Genom analyser av materiella, diskursiva, naturliga och kulturella dimensioner av andningens formationer, i sjukdomen pneumokonios, telefonsexarbete samt ångest och panikattacker, föreslår Breathing Matters en icke-universialiserande och politiserad förståelse av förkroppsligande. Genom denna ansats konceptualiseras mänskliga kroppar som agentiella aktörer i en intersektionell politik. Magdalena Górska argumenterar att kampen för att andas och för andningsbara liv är ett angeläget ämne för differentiella former av politisk praktik. Denna sårbara och vardagliga praktik som både består av kroppsmateriella och kroppsaffektiva handlingar konstituerar politik. Placerad i en kontext av feminist poststrukturalistisk, nymaterialistisk och postkonstruktivistisk debatt erbjuder Breathing Matters en diskussion kring mänskligt förkroppsligande och agentskap som är omkonfigurerad på ett posthumanistiskt sätt. Den tvärvetenskapliga analytiska praktiken visar att andning är ett fenomen som är viktigt att studera från vetenskapliga, medicinska, politiska, miljömässiga och sociala perspektiv.