Emily F. Rothman

In A Nutshell

Emily F. Rothman has developed a non-judgmental, science-based curriculum that provides teens with the tools needed to understand how pornography influences their understanding of sex, sexual consent, intimacy, and dating behavior.

About Emily

Boston University professor Emily F. Rothman is a leading public health scholar on sexually explicit media and its impact on adolescent dating relationships. She has conducted multiple research studies with teenage participants to identify what they view, when, why, and how it may affect them. She also co-designed and co-taught the first course on pornography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and partnered with the Boston Public Health Commission to create a “pornography literacy curriculum” for teenagers. Emily has led several federally-funded research projects sponsored by the NIH, the National Institute of Justice, and various foundations in an effort to help identify causes and consequences of adolescent dating aggression, sexual assault, and human trafficking. She also founded and served as Chair of the Violence and Trauma special interest group at the Society for Behavioral Medicine, authored a report on batterer intervention programs for the World Health Organization, and is an appointed member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Sexual and Domestic Violence.