Bella is a sex and relationship expert (PhD)

Bella Ellwood-Clayton was born in Melbourne, Australia; daughter of avant garde composer and playwright Syd Clayton (for a description of Clayton’s work see here or, for a list of his plays see here). At a young age, Bella moved to Vancouver, Canada. Here she spent most of her childhood and high school years. Bella modeled at Carol Jackson Modeling Agency, taking part in fashion shows, television commercials, and magazine photoshoots.

Bella relocated to Montreal where she completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1999 from Concordia University, majoring in anthropology. Her honours thesis examined beauty cross-culturally. She received first class honours and was the recipient of the Mark Doughty Scholarship.

Soon after, with a crew from National Geographic, Bella took to the jungle to explore tattoo and social change in the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia. This documentary continues to air from a wide range of international locations.

In 2000 Bella was offered a full PhD scholarship. She then conducted an ethnography in the central Philippines about young women’s sexual and reproductive health. As the Philippines is the texting (SMS) capital of the world, her research followed suit. Bella became regarded as an international mobile phone expert, speaking about love and technology at conferences in Asia, Europe, America and Australia and publishing her work in a number of prestigious academic anthologies. She also taught undergraduate classes about mobile telephony at Hallym University, in Korea.

Throughout her postgraduate degree Bella was the recipient of numerous grants, scholarships and traveling bursaries. In 2004 she completed her thesis from The Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, WHO Collaborating Centre, The University of Melbourne.

After spending time in Canada, on a novel and working as an ’extra’ and body double for film and television, Bella returned to Australia to write a sex and relationship column for the newspaper mX - published in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. She then accepted the role of Sextxt ambassador, a service that provides sexual health information to Australian youth.

Bella regularly contributes to magazines Women’s Health and Cosmopolitan and appears on radio, television and gives public talks. At present, she offers advice about love and sex on channel 7’s Sunrise and The Morning Show and pens articles for Sunday Life magazine, which appears in the Melbourne Age and Sydney Sun-Herald., Her book about female sexuality, ’Sex drive: in pursuit of female desire’ was published with critical success last year in Australia (Allen & Unwin)–and will hit the American market in the coming months. Bella also provides individual and couple consultations.