The University of New South Wales

The National Centre in HIV Social Research (NCHSR) is proud to announce

Everyday Lives logo
The 10th Social Research Conference on HIV, Hepatitis C and Related Diseases

27th-28th March 2008
The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Speaker Biographies
Raewyn Connell

Raewyn Connell is University Professor at the University of Sydney. She is author, co-author or editor of twenty-one books, including Masculinities, Ruling Class Ruling Culture, Making the Difference, Gender and Power, Sustaining Safe Sex, Schools and Social Justice, The Men and the Boys, Gender and the forthcoming Southern Theory. A contributor to research journals in sociology, education, political science, gender studies and related fields, she has also been a long-term participant in the labour and peace movements. Her current research concerns neo-liberalism, global power holders, and the changing role of intellectuals. Email: r.connell@edfac.usyd.edu.au.

Kate Holden

Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin: A memoir (Text Publishing), about her years as a heroin addict and prostitute in Melbourne. First published in 2005, her memoir has been shortlisted for awards in Australia, and has since been sold to the USA, the UK, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Brazil and Italy. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and RMIT, and is on the CAL Second Book Fellowship at Varuna, the Writers' House. In 2008 she will take up a residency at the B. R. Whiting Library in Rome. Kate is now a full-time writer of reviews, essays, and a regular column for The Age, has had a short play performed, and she is working on her first novel.

Tim Rhodes

Tim Rhodes is Professor in Public Health Sociology, and Director of the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour, at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London. He leads a programme of research focused on the social aspects of risk and HIV/HCV prevention associated with injecting drug use, including in Eastern and South Eastern Europe. His academic background is in qualitative methods and the sociology of risk, including the social structural production of drug-related health risk. His current research projects include a qualitative longitudinal study of children's experiences of family life affected by drug use (for the UK Department of Health), a mixed method study of drug injecting in Serbia and Montenegro (for the UK Department for International Development), an evidence-based review and modelling of harm reduction impact (for the European Commission), a qualitative study of crack and speedball injection (for the UK National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse), and a qualitative prospective study of HIV treatment access and experience (for the Economic and Social Research Council). He is Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Drug Policy.

John Rule

John is the Deputy Director of the National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS Australia (NAPWA) and for the last two years has been the NAPWA representative on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the NCHSR. John has worked at NAPWA since 1999 and has always been interested in the ways social and behavioral research constructs images of HIV Living. His PhD research, completed at the University of Technology, Sydney, was an interrogation of the languages and social practices associated with activist and radical community work traditions in inner Sydney over the last thirty years. His thesis findings have been published in the research journal Studies in Continuing Education. Through his work with NAPWA John has also been involved in developing peer based programs for HIV-positive people in PNG and Timor-Leste. Email: john@napwa.org.au

Niamh Stephenson

Niamh Stephenson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Science at the University of New South Wales. She researches the role of experience in socio-political change. Her book, Analysing Everyday Experience: Social Research and Political Change examines the relationships between positive people's experiences and dominant discourses of HIV (co-authored with Dimitris Papadopoulos, published by Palgrave, 2006). Escape! Power and Revolt in the 21st Century examines recent shifts in the politics of experience in the fields of health, labour and migration (co-authored with Dimitris Papadopoulos and Vassilis Tsianos, Pluto, forthcoming 2008). She has published in the fields of social research and cultural studies and is currently undertaking work on pandemic influenza and biosecurity. Email: n.stephenson@unsw.edu.au

Peter Waples-Crowe

Peter Waples-Crowe works at the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO), Melbourne as a Public Health Policy Officer. Peter is a Koori, a descendent of the Ngarigo people of the Snowy Mountains of NSW. Peter has been working at VACCHO for the past 31/2 years and in Indigenous health for over 15. He gained a lot of his interest and skills in research and public health while working on various projects for both mainstream and Aboriginal community controlled health organisations and in NSW and Victoria. He is a graduate of the NSW Public Health Officer Training program and has post graduate qualifications in Public Health, Health Promotion and Epidemiology.


Further information

Please email the conference organising team on nchsr_conf@unsw.edu.au