FROM THE FEMINIST POLITICS OF LIVED EXPERIENCE TO THE SOCIAL SPACES OF EPIDEMICS
Abstract
The work of the National Centre in HIV Social Research is marked by an insistence on both the unstable and constantly shifting nature of the epidemics it seeks to understand, and on the need to understand the social relations and the social spaces in which HIV and hepatitis C circulate and are embodied. At the same time as embarking on the research that later came to found the National Centre in HIV Social Research, Sue Kippax was part of a feminist collective researching what might appear to be a completely different topic. Together with June Crawford , Jenny Onyx, Una Gault and Pam Benton, Sue published Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory in 1992. In this paper, I want to trace something of the collective investment in transforming social spaces from this feminist work on emotion into the ongoing research around HIV, hepatitis C, drug use, gay community and international work that many people connected to the National Centre are actively involved in. I suggest that the approach to research that marks the work of the National Centre has been underpinned and supported by feminist research which seeks to go beyond the statement that 'the personal is