The early 2020s marked the fortieth anniversary of the first confirmed cases of AIDS and a new wave of historical interest in the ongoing epidemic. This edited collection showcases some of this exciting new work, with a particular focus on less well-known histories from western Europe. Featuring research from social, cultural and public historians, sociologists and area studies scholars, its eight chapters address experiences, events and memories across regions and nations including Scotland, Wales, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands, paying careful attention to often-overlooked groups including drug users, sex workers, nurses, mothers and people in prison. Offering new perspectives on the development and implementation of policy, the nature of activism and expertise and which (or whose) histories are remembered, it is essential reading not only for historians of health but also for all those working in HIV/AIDS studies.
Table of Content
Foreword – Virginia Berridge
Introduction – Janet Weston and Hannah J. Elizabeth
1 Selling sex in the age of HIV/AIDS: activism, politics, and medicine in Norway, 1983–90 – Ketil Slagstad and Anne Kveim Lie
2 Drug criminalisation, the Catholic Church and the 1988 founding of a Rome AIDS care centre – Brian De Grazia
3 Responding to HIV/AIDS in European prisons, 1980s–2000s – Janet Weston
4 Nursing a plague: nurses’ perspectives on their work during the United Kingdom HIV/AIDS crisis, 1981–96 – Tommy Dickinson, Nathan Appasamy, Lee P. Pritchard, and Laura Savidge
5 A phoney war? Health, education and popular responses to HIV/AIDS in Wales, 1983–2003 – Daryl Leeworthy
6 Recovering mothers’ experiences of HIV/AIDS health activism in Edinburgh, 1983–2000 – Hannah J. Elizabeth
7 The European HIV/AIDS Archive: building a queer counter-memory – Agata Dziuban, Eugen Januschke, Ulrike Klöppel, Todd Sekuler, and Justyna Struzik
8 Pandemics and national pride: collecting and curating the history of HIV/AIDS – Manon S. Parry
Index
About the author
Janet Weston is Assistant Professor at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Hannah J. Elizabeth is Research Fellow at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine