The HIV epidemic can be viewed as a global mass disabling event. Since the very first cases were reported, affected communities have participated in radical activism to fill a void left by governments slow or unwilling to act.

In the UK, this activism has included empowering HIV positive people to live and die with dignity, challenging government inaction through protest, and campaigning for fair access to healthcare. This World AIDS Day and Disability History Month, join LGBTQIA+ and disability historian, Jaime Starr, to explore the ways HIV activists in the UK have dramatically changed society.

Bio:
Jaime Starr (they/them) is a queer, deaf and disabled oral historian and curator working with museums and archives to share LGBTQIA+ and disabled activist movement histories. Through their oral history practice, they documented the life story of Jonathan Blake, one of the first, and longest surviving British HIV+ people. Jaime is a Northern Bridge PhD scholar at Newcastle University, where they are mapping undocumented LGBTQIA+ material in the Tyne & Wear regional archives.

Event image taken from People's History Museum, phm.org.uk/blogposts/a-history-of-uk-hiv-activism/