Outputs and Outcomes
Publications
1. Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Book review of Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England, by George J. Severs, The English Historical Review, 2025.
2. Craig Griffiths, Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Bodie Ashton, Christopher Ewing, Tiffany N. Florvil, Benno Gammerl, Paola Medina-Gonzalez, Lauren Stokes, Katie Sutton, and Sébastien Tremblay, Forum: ‘New Directions in Queer and Trans* German History’, German History, forthcoming.
3. Moisés Fernández-Cano is co-editing a special issue on the history of HIV in collaboration with the European HIV History Network, with a dedicated meeting scheduled in St. Gallen, Switzerland (2–4 February 2026). In preparation.
Conferences & Seminar talks
Keynote lecture
Nikolaos Papadogiannis, ‘Sexuality, Activism, and the State in Modern Europe’ workshop, European University Institute, Florence, 24 April 2026. Title: ‘Shared authority and queer oral history’.
Invited Talks
1. Contribution of Nikolaos Papadogiannis to a roundtable discussion involving the Editorial Board members of Social History on the continued relevance and future directions of social history (as a field) in the face of current global challenges and political configurations, York, 30 March 2026.
2. Talk by Nikolaos Papadogiannis at the launch of the special issue ‘Transnational Histories of Collective Action on HIV/AIDS in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s’, co-edited by Papadogiannis and Somak Biswas, and published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, May 2025. The launch will take place at the University of Cambridge on 27 February 2026.
3. Talk by Nikolaos Papadogiannis at the book launch of Maud Bracke’s latest monograph, Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980. The book launch took place at the University of Glasgow on 1 December 2026.
4. ‘The European Histories of HIV/AIDS’, University of Copenhagen, 10-12 September 2025. Talk: Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Moisés Fernández-Cano, ‘AIDS Campaigning between the Global South and Western Europe since the 1980s’.
5. ‘Race and sexual and reproductive health in historical perspectives’ international workshop, Geneva, 18-20 June 2025. Paper: Nikolaos Papadogiannis, ‘Sex workers’ rights activists and intersectional HIV/AIDS campaigns in West Berlin, 1980s-1990s’.
6. ‘Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities’ PhD school, Durham’s Institute for Medical Humanities on 24-26 March 2025. Nikolaos Papadogiannis, co-run with Sage Brice (Durham), led a creative workshop in which they discussed with PhD students the potential and challenges of conveying research findings through comic books, and also explored with the students what a comic they would author would look like.
7. Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare seminar series, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Talk: Nikolaos Papadogiannis, ‘Translating interviews with Greek transgender HIV/AIDS activists’.
In conference panels that project team members have co-organised
1. ‘Health Beyond Medicine’, biannual conference of the European Association of Health and Medical Humanities, 26-29 August 2025. Papadogiannis was the co-organiser of a panel on decentring HIV histories, and delivered the following talk: Nikolaos Papadogiannis, ‘HIV and AIDS work, and Black African communities in the UK, 1996-2008’
2. Scottish Global History Network conference, Glasgow, 27 September 2024. Nikolaos Papadogiannis was the co-organiser of the showcasing event ‘Research on global queer history in Scottish universities’.
Training workshops
1. NNMHR (Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research) early career workshop, organised by Nikolaos Papadogiannis. Title: ‘Decentring the Medical Humanities’. Scheduled for late October 2026.
2. ‘Producing and reflecting on research-based comic books’, training workshop designed and delivered by Nikolaos Papadogiannis and Koonal Duggal, funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities, and scheduled for 4 June 2026 at the University of Stirling.
Webinar
Mbali Pewa is organising a webinar with Dr Zanele Woods from Lancaster University, titled ‘Unpacking the Stigma: A Dialogue on LGBTQ+ Rights, Sex Work, and Legal Reform,” scheduled for March 2026. We intend to invite two speakers; Dr. Woods will extend an invitation to Tenesha Myrie. Her most recent article is “Strategic Litigation and the Use of Public Health Arguments in Same-Sex Decriminalisation Cases in the Commonwealth Caribbean.” I will invite Professor India Thusi, who serves as a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Her research examines racial and sexual hierarchies in relation to policing, race, and gender, and she has extensively written about sex work in South Africa.
Public engagement/Impact
Policy brief
Policy brief on why, if the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill becomes law, this will be harmful for sex workers and obstruct the Scottish government’s aim to end HIV transmission by 2030. The brief has been authored by Jacqui Stevenson (National AIDS Trust), Scotland For Decrim, Waverley Care, Andrew Ramsay (St Andrews), Giulia Sbaffi (Stirling), and Nikolaos Papadogiannis (Stirling). The policy brief is available here: https://nat.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Sex-work-and-HIV-Scotland.pdf
Advice offered to the Wellcome Collection
All members of the impact project team have been invited by and liaised with Wellcome Collection to help decentre/decolonise the study of HIV and AIDS history by making materials from this Collection that contain the ideas and actions of HIV activists from the Global South more accessible to the public.
Courses
Engaging with Government course, 2025
Nikolaos Papadogiannis has been selected, following a successful application Papadogiannis has submitted, to attend the prestigious Engaging with Government course. This course is run by the AHRC and the Institute of Government, and aims to enhance the skills of its participants (researchers in the humanities) in influencing policymakers with their research.
Co-production workshops with community partners
1. Workshop on inclusive HIV campaigns and sex work, 9 December, which some project team members (Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Mbali Pewa, Lucy Cann) co-designed and delivered with Giulia Sbaffi and community partners. Those partners included, among others, members of Sisonke (South Africa), SWIPE (Italy), Terrence Higgins Trust (UK), the National AIDS Trust (UK), National Ugly Mugs (UK), Scotland for Decrim, and Ruth Morgan Thomas. The workshop addressed challenges that sex workers have faced in HIV campaigns, but also productive examples from synergies between HIV activism and sex workers’ rights activism in South Africa, Italy, and the UK. The fair participation of voices from the Global South and the intersectional dimensions of HIV campaigns and sex workers’ rights activism figured prominently in the workshop and were addressed particularly in relation to the demand for the decriminalisation of sex work. The event took place in the National Library of Scotland thanks to funding from UKRI. Eddy Phillips prepared the visual notes, which are available here.
2. ‘Our Stories Told By Us: Celebrating the African Contribution to the UK HIV response’, creative writing workshops co-organised by the Black African women’s collective ‘Our Stories Told By Us’, the HIV charity Waverley Care, Nikolaos Papadogiannis, and Mbali Pewa, scheduled for 19 and 20 May 2026 in Glasgow and Edinburgh, respectively.
3. Monthly online co-production workshops with Uhuru Productions to design and deliver the documentary on the history of HIV activism in South Africa and its global contexts.
4. Koonal Duggal is designing a one-day consultation event (tentatively) entitled “Unheard Narratives of HIV/AIDS Activism in India” in collaboration with Unsound Project in Hyderabad. The Unsound Project is a New Delhi-based trans and queer-led group for mental health, disabilities, and human rights of the community, with a centring of anti-caste and feminist values. The event will provide an opportunity to witness, share and discuss the experiences HIV/AIDS activists belonging to different castes, class, religion, gender, and sexualities representing various organisations across India.
Other forms of transnational collaboration with community partners
1. Early contacts of Moisés Fernández-Cano with the HIV sector in Spain (SEISIDA and CESIDA) following his meeting with María José Fuster, with the aim of exploring potential partnerships and interviews.
2. Ongoing communication of Moisés Fernández-Cano with OTRAS (sex worker union) to assess possibilities for research engagement and community partnership.
3. Participation of Moisés Fernández-Cano in the Spanish LGBTQIA+ Heritage Research Group, including work on HIV-related heritage in Spain.
4. Collaboration of Moisés Fernández-Cano with the Spanish LGBT History Month (2027 edition), contributing to a programme dedicated to HIV memory in partnership with local organisations.
Collaboration with researchers and archives
Other forms of transnational collaboration with community partners
1. Establishment of an informal research network at the University of Stirling entitled ‘Multi-directional encounters: transregional and intersectional histories of HIV solidarities’. The network involves close collaboration between the project team of the global history of HIV activism project, and Giulia Sbaffi, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow working on the project ‘Fighting HIV Through Intersectionality: Queer and Trans Activism in 1980s Italy’. The network has been running regular reading sessions from September to December 2025 on state-of-the-art approaches to the history of HIV activism.
2. Collaboration of Nikolaos Papadogiannis and Mbali Pewa with GALA Queer Archive (South Africa) to store in that archive transcripts of interviews with South African HIV activists conducted by Mbali Pewa.
3. Collaboration of Nikolaos Papadogiannis with the European HIV and AIDS Archive to store in that archive transcripts of interviews conducted by members of the project team.
4. Collaboration with CeDInCI, a key archive on the history of activism and sexuality in Argentina, on digitising part of their collections on HIV history, which will be overseen by Moisés Fernández-Cano.
5. Nikolaos Papadogiannis and Moisés Fernández-Cano have initiated and been co-running alongside Maximiliano Marentes (UNSAM, Argentina) and Jacky Collins (Stirling) an online network of experts in queer studies, involving the Queer Studies Reading Group (Stirling), and the research groups PISEX (Argentina) and MariCorners (Spain). The network will be running regular reading sessions very year.
6. Koonal Duggal and Nikolaos Papadogiannis have initiated and will be co-running alongside The Varta Trust (India) an online network of experts in queer studies in the UK and India.
7. Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Giulia Sbaffi, Moisés Fernández-Cano, Mbali Pewa, Koonal Duggal, Merve Alçayır, ‘Archiving HIV and AIDS histories: decentring perspectives’, online workshop with archivists and researchers working on HIV history in the Global South and North, scheduled for late September 2026.
Secondments offered
The project hosted Lucy Cann, a PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London, from 6 October 2025 to 6 January 2026.
Visiting scholar
Nikolaos Papadogiannis was hosted by the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare at the University of Strathclyde as a Visiting Scholar in February 2025.
Research Culture
1. ‘GLOBAL-R2: Inclusive Global Recruitment and Research projects in the UK’, application for a Future Leaders Fellows Development Network Flexible Creative grant, led by Nikolaos Papadogiannis (currently under review). If successful, the grant will fund an initiative that will develop outputs and outcomes, including a checklist and mentoring sessions, to make recruitment processes fairer and inclusive for Global South scholars.
2. Mbali Pewa, and Moisés Fernández-Cano, in collaboration with Giulia Sbaffi (Stirling) have launched a network of postdoctoral researchers at the University of Stirling exploring ways to promote the self-care of researchers working on sensitive topics, like the medical humanities.