Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence & Cultural Change

University of Sussex

Queory Seminar Series: Autumn 2010

 

Gay Liberation in Britain: 40 Years On

Simon Watney, University for the Creative Arts

Thursday, 14 October 2010

Fulton Building Room 104

 

Simon Watney has been involved in British lesbian and gay politics since 1970.  He was co-founder with Mark Rowlands of Brighton GLF and has a long-established international reputation in the field of HIV/AIDS education and service provision.  He has also been extensively involved in cultural and voluntary sector responses to HIV/AIDS both as a writer/scholar and as a founder of numerous charities and not-for-profit companies.  From 1985-89, Simon was founding chair of the Health Education Group at the Terrence Higgins Trust where he developed the Trust’s pioneering HIV prevention campaigns.  Simon also was a member of the Learning About Aids Project based at Bristol Polytechnic, which developed the main teaching text for HIV/AIDS education in British secondary schools.  In 1990, he was co-founder of the activist group OutRage, and in 1991, he was founder-signatory of the Red Ribbon Project in New York.  From 1988-1995, he wrote a monthly column on HIV/AIDS issues for the Gay Times. Openly HIV+, Simon was a trustee of the charity Crusaid from 2007-2010, with a particular interest in questions of AIDS and poverty in the UK.  Intertwined with his own personal trajectory, Simon’s talk will address this rich history of the politics of sexual dissidence in Britain from 1970 to the present day.

Brief  bio:

Simon Watney is currently Acting Head of the M.A. in Contextual Studies at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey.  His books include Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, and the Media, which has been published in three editions (1987, 1989, and 1997), and which won the 1987 Gustavus Meyer Prize for the study of human rights;  Taking Liberties: AIDS and Cultural Politics, co-edited with Erica Carter (1989), which won the 1990 US Words Project and Gregory Kolovakos Prize; Practices of Freedom: Selected Writings on HIV/AIDS (1994), and Imagine Hope: AIDS and Gay Identity (2000).   Simon also received the Pink Paper Annual Lifetime Achievement Award, London, in 2001 for his ‘long campaigning for lesbian and gay rights and the rights of those affected by HIV and AIDS.’

This seminar is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact  Prof. William J Spurlin, Director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence & Cultural Change on [log in to unmask]  We look forward to welcoming you at Sussex!