The event is open to King’s students and staff

Join us for our first academic event of LGBTQ+ History Month where we will be joined by Dr. George Severs, giving a guest lecture on the history of AIDS activism in London.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as HIV/AIDS swept across the UK, London cemented itself as the capital of the activist response to the epidemic. From the radicalism of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) to Positively Women, groups were formed which aimed to fight the injustices which HIV/AIDS were causing Londoners living with the virus. It also hosted activist groups and organisations with international remits. This talk looks at the vibrant and diverse activist constellation which mobilised across late twentieth-century London, a movement which remains active today.

The lecture will be in BH(SE)1.05 Bush House Lecture Theatre 4 at Strand Campus and will have a wine reception following the event, as well as a Q&A.

Dr George Severs is a historian of HIV/AIDS, sexual violence and sexual health in modern Britain. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland where he is working on a history of sexual health and race. Before moving to Geneva, George was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London where he worked on a history of HIV/AIDS and sexual violence as part of the Wellcome-funded SHaME project led by Professor Joanna Bourke. George is a leading oral historian, sitting on the Editorial Board of Oral History, the journal of the UK’s Oral History Society (OHS), and as Secretary of the OHS’ LGBTQ Special Interest Group (or ‘SIG’). In 2019-20, George was a Holstein Doctoral Fellow in Queer and Trans Studies in Religion at the University of California, Riverside.