Hi there. I am Michael, a provisional psychologist and researcher based in Sydney.
I work at the intersection of clinical psychology, sexual orientation research, and social psychology.
I made this site as a small home for the work I’m doing. Mind the mess — renovations are currently underway.
In my work, I like to explore how people understand themselves, relate to others, and move through their social, romantic, and sexual worlds. I’m also interested in intimacy and the origins and experience of sexual orientation.
If this interests you, please don’t be shy to reach out. I love to talk about my work, and I’d love to hear about yours.
I’m currently completing my doctoral thesis and am supported by the Westpac Future Leaders Scholarship.
In this work I am building different frameworks for understanding diverse bisexual phenomena, with the hope of improving research and clinical practice with this sexual minority group and supporting the mental, sexual, and social wellbeing of bisexual people more broadly.
I currently Chair the W100 National Executive Committee, helping lead an alumni network of more than 1,000 researchers, thought leaders, social change entrepreneurs, and do-gooders. In this role, I have supported national engagement strategy, built mentorship and learning initiatives, and started a podcast to showcase the talent, impact, and authenticity of the network.
I use a range of quantitative and qualitative methods. Some of the projects I am currently working on are listed below.
Experiences of LGBTQ+ community connectedness in an international sample of bisexual people: a thematic analysis.
Diverse bisexual phenomena in cisgender bisexual men — an empirically derived typology.
How is partner gender related to relationship satisfaction in plurisexual cisgender men?
Comparing the brain structure of bisexual, lesbian, and straight women: an MRI study.
Why do bisexual people use the bisexual label? Evaluating bisexual people’s reports against expert and general community perceptions.
How representative are lived experience representatives?
Testing the fraternal birth order effect in bisexual men.
Gender identification in transgender and gender diverse people living in Mainland China.
Defining gooners, gooning, and the gooning community: a pre-registered exploratory, mixed-methods design.
Does positive bisexual identity buffer the negative impacts of minority stress? A cross-sectional study of bisexual young people.
I teach and mark across undergraduate psychology subjects, including research methods and statistics, social psychology, personality, and mental health conditions. I have most recently lectured first-year Neuroscience.
I ran tutorials and marked across undergraduate psychology subjects, including developmental psychology (School of Psychology) and personal and professional development (Adelaide Business School).
I have secured research funding from the American Institute of Bisexuality to support some of my doctoral work, and have been awarded travel grants to present my research interstate and internationally.
Kassara, M., Xue, L., Pinkus, R., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2026, June). The Gender of His Partner: Relationship Satisfaction, Sexual Identity Openness, and Social Support Among Plurisexual Men [Conference Poster], Faculty of Science: Improving Health and Wellbeing Symposium, Sydney, Australia.
Kassara, M., Clements, C., Ratcliffe, S., Morandini, J. S., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2025, November). Caveats to community connectedness: A thematic analysis of bisexual individuals’ open-text survey responses [Conference presentation], Gender and Sexuality Pre-Conference, Society of Australasian Social Psychologists and Australian Conference on Personality and Individual Differences Annual Meeting, Melbourne, Australia.
Kassara, M., Morandini, J. S., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2025, November). Sense-making around bisexual identification in cisgender men and cisgender women: Associations with wellbeing, sexuality, and minority stress [Conference presentation], Society of Australasian Social Psychologists and Australian Conference on Personality and Individual Differences Annual Meeting, Melbourne, Australia.
Kassara, M., Mascelloni, M., Woods, Morandini, J. S., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2025, June). Potential Neural Correlates of Bisexuality in Women [Conference Presentation], International Academy of Sex Research Annual Meeting, Portland, ME, United States.
Kassara, M., Morandini, J. S., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2025, June). A preliminary empirically derived typology: bisexual subtypes [Conference Presentation], International Academy of Sex Research Annual Meeting, Portland, ME, United States.
Kassara, M., Morandini, J. S., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2024, November). Bisexual Subtypes: A Mixed Methods Protocol [Conference Short Talk], Society of Australasian Social Psychologists Gender and Sexuality Pre-Conference, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Bisexuality Isn’t Just Misunderstood — It’s Misdefined
An essay on why bisexuality is better understood as many distinct experiences rather than a single category.
Let’s talk.