Thesis Title:
Pedagogies Against Abandonment: Popular Education and HIV Community Activism in South Africa
Thesis Abstract:
People living with HIV (PLHIV) are faced with a compounding crisis. Shifting geopolitical priorities have seen the withdrawal of international public health funding, such as from PEPFAR, USAID and UKAID, while the rise of transnational anti-gender movements has led to growing pressure on sexuality and sexual health education and provision. While these dynamics are global, their effects are most pronounced in countries like South Africa, where these developments risk new forms of institutional abandonment, leaving affected communities to navigate gaps in care, information, and support.
In this context, community-based popular education initiatives have emerged as a critical tool for survival, care, and collective empowerment amongst affected communities.
This PhD project examines the popular education strategies, mutual aid networks, and community initiatives PLHIV in South Africa are creating to survive and resist the risk of institutional abandonment. By investigating how these efforts can be further strengthened through participatory research and transnational engagement, it explores how collective learning about HIV is not only about sharing biomedical knowledge but a means through which communities build solidarity, challenge stigma, and advocate for themselves.
The project is mentored by Dr. Billy Holzberg and Professor Andrea Cornwall and is envisioned as a collaboration between two leading transnational HIV civil society organisations. The project is focused on the work of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), South Africa’s leading grassroots HIV and health justice movement based in the anti-apartheid struggle, and is supported by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), the international grassroots political group working to end the HIV pandemic, through their London chapter and will facilitate and deepen the collaboration of these transnational grassroots community and public education actors.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Billy Holzberg