Welcome to NCHSR

The National Centre in HIV Social Research, established in 1990 with funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, is internationally recognised for its contribution to the Australian response to HIV and hepatitis C. While the core work has been the social aspects of HIV, particularly in regard to sexual practice, the research program has expanded in recent years to include social research related to hepatitis C, injecting and illicit drug use, sexual health, Aboriginal health and the Asia-Pacific region.

Director's desk

Appointments In February 2012, Professor Peter Aggleton will take up a UNSW strategic professorship at NCHSR with links to other areas within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He has been a leading scholar and contributor to HIV social research since the early days of the HIV epidemic and I look forward to both welcoming him and working with him to support the Australian and International response to HIV and related diseases. 

Promotions Congratulations to Drs Joanne Bryant and Limin Mao who were recently promoted to Senior Research Fellows. Joanne's research focuses on the risk and prevention of blood-borne viruses and sexually transmissible infections in people who inject drugs and young (indigenous) people. Limin’s work is in particular concerned with the sexual and risk reduction practices of gay men. - John de Wit

Upcoming conference

12th Social Research Conference website

e-Newsletter

Our quarterly e-Newsletter brings you the latest information about our research projects, reports and events. In addition to disseminating study results, we hope that the e-Newsletter will stimulate discussion about ways the sector can translate social science research into policy and practice.

You are invited to subscribe to this e-Newsletter and occasional e-Alerts which will announce new publications and upcoming seminars. 

As part of our policy to reduce our carbon footprint, from 2012 publications will only be distributed via email. So you must subscribe to ensure you continue to receive your publications in the future,

Of course you may choose to stop receiving information at any time by clicking on unSubscribe.

Staff showcase

Two senior staff from NCHSR recently presented at the 10th AIDS Impact Conference in Santa Fe, USA.

Dr Asha Persson, a research fellow, was a plenary speaker and presented on HIV transmission risk in serodiscordant couples. To understand why serodiscordant couples engage in sexual practices that increase the chance of transmission, we need to resist the idea of risk as an objective and universal concept that can be readily applied across a diversity of cultures and contexts. It is an idea that rests on the assumption that HIV figures in predictable ways in serodiscordant couples: that members of such couples always perceive and experience their respective serostatuses as inherently different from one another and that they recognise this difference as posing a particular kind of risk. On this basis, couples become defined and measured largely in terms of their capacity to negotiate this risk. However, this assumption predetermines serodiscordance and obscures its potentially diverse meanings and local complexities. Serodiscordance, like risk, is not a uniform category, but rather takes on multiple shapes as it is brought into being by different practices, relationship priorities, and cultural dynamics of illness, gender and sexuality. Dr Persson can be contacted by email.

Dr Limin Mao, a senior research fellow, presented on the many ways gay men moderate the risk of transmitting or acquiring HIV through sexual practices. Three annual surveys showed that the decisions faced by gay men are much more complex than the decision whether or not to use a condom. Choices range in terms of the likely degree of protection from HIV that they offer: from avoiding sex or anal sex altogether to avoiding unprotected anal sex with someone known to have the opposite HIV status. While sexual practices altered according to participants' HIV status, gay men tended to stick to their chosen strategy. However, the fact that gay men adopted such a variety of harm reduction approaches posed a challenge to health educators who promoted a one-size-fits-all safer-sex approach. Dr Mao can be contacted by email.