Reframing HIV stigma: towards a five cities research programme

Ending HIV stigma is one the goals of the UN Fast-Track Cities initiative, which invites local municipalities in the Global South and North to commit to preventing HIV transmission. 

This project queries such global interventions by bringing together a network of HIV scholars, activists, artists, policy makers and practitioners in five fast-track cities: Delhi, Brighton, New York, Nairobi and Havana, with the aim of developing a major international research programme foregrounding the body in relation to stigma, HIV treatment and prevention encompassing intimate, public and global perspectives. 

We will develop innovative approaches for gathering context-specific knowledge about HIV through a series of workshops that follow the arts-based methodology embodied mapping. We will investigate how visual methods can open new trajectories for HIV and stigma research and explore how the body in relation to HIV and stigma is understood differently between and within urban locations.