About event
Configuring the user in next generation HIV technologies: shifting regimes of agency, equity,& surveillance medicine
Join us for our final 2023 #SSNSeminar, both in person on our Burwood Ccampus, and livestreamed via our Youtube channel. SSN Visiting Scholar Dr Anthony K J Smith will share his exciting new work on PrEP technologies and adherence in relation to health publics, affected communities and care. Anthony will be in discussion with Dr Dean Murphy after his talk, chaired by Deakin host and collaborator, Dr Kiran Pienaar.
Configuring the user in next generation HIV technologies: shifting regimes of agency, equity, and surveillance medicine
Abstract
HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has evolved beyond daily pills for HIV prevention, including the use of pills around the time of sex (on-demand PrEP), and two-monthly injectable PrEP. Accompanying these new forms of HIV prevention is an ongoing focus in the field of HIV prevention science on optimising patient adherence, inspiring an array of mundane and novel technological solutions such as phone apps, dosette boxes, appointment reminders, and digital pill systems. These technologies implicate different publics, reconfigure new relations between patient and provider, and imagine the archetypal PrEP user in different ways.
In this presentation I examine new developments in PrEP technologies, drawing on the concepts of health publics, social imaginaries, and surveillance medicine. Through new technologies, patients are imagined as simultaneously empowered to have choice over new forms of PrEP, but also as unable to properly realise this agentic capacity without further intervention and monitoring to optimise uptake and adherence. The goal of eliminating new HIV transmissions justify a growing range of adherence technologies, including explorations of ‘ingestible biosensors’ in the US. While new technologies are optimistically presented as means to reduce inequities in HIV prevention, their implementation reveals persistent troubles in health resourcing and community engagement with underserved communities. At stake is a fundamental question – who are new PrEP and adherence technologies for, and what are their implications for care, affected communities, and for health publics?
Speaker Bio
Dr Anthony K J Smith (he/him) is a sociologist of health, gender, and sexuality specialising in HIV, sexual health, and LGBTQ+ communities. He is employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW Sydney. His research draws on sociological theory, data justice, critical public health, and science and technologies studies. Anthony is Editorial Advisory Board member of Health Sociology Review and Associate Editor of Sexual Health.
Discussant Bio
Dr Dean Murphy is a senior research fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS), La Trobe University. Dean’s work focuses on experiences of HIV diagnosis, stigma, biomedical HIV prevention technologies, sexual health and well-being, and the meanings of drug consumption. He has been awarded major grants to study ‘chemsex’ practices, sexual health among Aboriginal young people, and methamphetamine use among men who have sex with men. Dean has a long background in the HIV sector, having worked at AFAO for many years.
Chair Bio
Dr Kiran Pienaar is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Deakin University. Her research program centres on two main areas: 1) gender, sexuality and the body, especially in relation to identity politics, drug consumption and LGBTQ+ cultures; and 2) the social dimensions of health with a focus on pandemics. Kiran is the author of Politics in the Making of HIV/AIDS in South Africa (Palgrave) and a recent edited collection Narcofeminisms: Revisioning Drug Use (Sage) with Fay Dennis and Marsha Rosengarten.
Event Contact:
ssn-info@deakin.edu.auShare