Host Researcher: Dr Cesare Di Feliciantonio 

After more than three decades since its emergence, HIV does not represent anymore a ‘death sentence’ for those infected, but it still poses important challenges to healthcare systems and individual lives. Cities are at the forefront of policy interventions related to HIV/AIDS because of high numbers in HIV infections. In 2014  network of international organizations, national agencies and local governments launched the Fast-Track Cities initiative, whose main aim is to attain the so called ’90-90-90’ targets of UNAIDS: i) ensuring that at least 90% of people living with HIV (PLHIV) know their status; ii) improving access to antiretroviral therapies (ARTs) for PLHIV to 90%; iii) increasing to 90% the proportion of PLHIV on ARTs with an undetectable viral load in order to prevent new infections. Moreover, the initiative aims at reducing to zero the negative impact of stigma and discrimination. The main aim of this project, running under the supervision of Dr Cesare Di Feliciantonio, is to analyse the strategies implemented by local governments and institutions across Britain to achieve these targets through a relational comparative perspective that makes use of different cities to pose questions of one another. As acknowledged by critical scholars in geography and urban studies, ideas, interventions and policies circulate across different places, reshaping them while also being reshaped by local cultural systems, conflicting actors, organizational structures and political ideologies. Cities emerge therefore as bundles of social relations and interactions with dynamics at work in other places, and in wider regional, national and transnational arenas. In line with this perspective, the project analyses the strategies implemented by different British cities that have subscribed to the Fast-Track initiative (the provisional case studies are Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Manchester). The choice to focus on cities from different countries within the UK is aimed at maximizing the relational comparative and multiscalar effort of the project.

The project relies on the following methods for data collection and analysis:

Potential interns need to be Level 5 or above students who are enrolled in a social science or public health programme and have basic knowledge and experience of conducting qualitative interviews. Please outline your experience and skills in your expression of interest.