Joanna Harper
"Using testosterone levels to separate elite-level male and female athletes is a reasonable compromise to allow transgender women to compete while maintaining meaningful competition for all women within the category."
Joanna Harper
"Using testosterone levels to separate elite-level male and female athletes is a reasonable compromise to allow transgender women to compete while maintaining meaningful competition for all women within the category."
Joanna Harper has a master’s degree in physics and several years of experience working as a medical physicist. After her gender transition in 2004, and subsequent reduction in running speed, she turned her focus to the performance of transgender and intersex athletes. In 2015 Harper published the first peer-reviewed article containing quantitative analysis of the athletic performance of transgender athletes with differing hormonal values. Since then she has collected subsequent retrospective data on transgender athletes and is currently engaged in a prospective analysis of two transgender athletes. She is the author of the Rowman and Littlefield book
Sporting Gender: The History, Science and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes. Harper has authored articles on gender diverse athletes in both peer-reviewed publications and in the Duke University Law Review as well, including “The Fluidity of Gender and Implications for the Biology of Inclusion for Transgender and Intersex Athletes.” Harper has served as an advisor to the IOC on matters of gender diversity and sport since 2015. She was also a witness for the IAAF at both the Dutee Chand and Caster Semenya cases before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Harper has also worked with other international and national sporting federations to help develop appropriate transgender specific eligibility policy. Harper speaks frequently at scientific and professional conferences around the world on transgender and intersex athletes. In the fall of 2019 Harper relocated to Loughborough University where she is now engaged full-time in the study of transgender athletic performance.