Dr Alvaro Martinez Lacabe

Profile

I am an interdisciplinary social scientist and historian of HIV/AIDS whose research sits at the intersections of critical public health, medical sociology, queer studies and the history of medicine. My work examines how communities, activists and healthcare institutions shape biomedical knowledge, HIV prevention and sexual health governance, with particular attention to community agency, informal pharmaceutical practices and transnational networks of care.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary University of London, working on the Pharmaceutical Geographies of Self-Managed Sexual Health (PharmaSMaSH) project. My research investigates informal access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), examining how individuals, activists, community organisations and healthcare professionals negotiate pharmaceutical access across formal and informal healthcare systems.

My research combines historical inquiry with qualitative social science methodologies, including in-depth interviews, oral history, documentary analysis and digital research. A central concern is the relationship between biomedical authority and community agency, particularly how people affected by HIV/AIDS have challenged established forms of expertise and contributed to transformations in prevention, treatment and public health.

My peer-reviewed research has appeared in international social science and health journals including Global Public Health, Critical Public Health, Culture, Health & Sexuality and Health. I also develop the concept of prefigurative biopolitics to examine the role of community participation in shaping biomedical knowledge and practices.

Before joining Queen Mary, I held teaching and research appointments at the University of Sussex, the University of York and Birkbeck, University of London, and undertook research consultancy for The Open University. I hold a PhD in History from the University of Roehampton (2020), supported by an AHRC-TECHNE doctoral studentship, an MA in Sexual Dissidence in Literature and Culture from the University of Sussex, and a BA in English Studies from California State University, Stanislaus (summa cum laude).

My international academic activities include an ongoing teaching collaboration with National Taiwan University, where I have delivered annual invited lectures on oral history methodology since 2023, as well as invited postgraduate teaching at Regent's University London.

Teaching

I have taught at the University of York, University of Sussex and Birkbeck, University of London, contributing to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in sexuality studies, feminist theory, qualitative research methods and criminology. At York, my responsibilities included module convenorship, dissertation supervision and PhD advisory work.

• National Taiwan University (2023–present): Annual invited guest lecture, Oral History as Methodology, for Applied Qualitative Research Methods.
• Regent's University London (2025): Invited guest lecture for MSc Psychology students on HIV/AIDS oral histories, PrEP activism in the UK, stigma and shame, and qualitative methodologies (World AIDS Day, 1 December).
• University of Sussex (2023): Guest lecture, Queer Criminology.
• University of Sussex (2020): Guest lecture, Biopower, Biopolitics and Governmentality: Bodies and Pills.

Research

Research Interests:

Informal PrEP and self-managed sexual health

My research examines how people obtain and use HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) through pathways that extend beyond conventional clinical provision, including online purchasing, community networks and cross-border mobility. In work on informal PrEP, I explore how self-managed practices intersect with clinical monitoring and support, challenging a simple division between formal and informal healthcare. Rather than treating informal access solely as a question of adherence or risk, I investigate its social infrastructures, political possibilities and limitations, including the inequalities it may mitigate or reproduce. This research forms part of the Pharmaceutical Geographies of Self-Managed Sexual Health (PharmaSMaSH) project at Queen Mary University of London.

Transnational pharmaceutical geographies and health inequalities

My current research situates pharmaceutical access within transnational networks of activists, users, healthcare professionals and digital platforms. I am interested in how medicines and practical knowledge move across borders, how people combine different sources of care, and how pricing, regulation, stigma and uneven health infrastructures shape these pathways. Across this work, I bring together historical and qualitative approaches to understand pharmaceutical governance from the perspectives of those who negotiate, contest and sometimes reconfigure it.

HIV/AIDS histories, activism and biomedical knowledge

My historical research traces how gay men, HIV/AIDS activists, public health organisations and clinicians have shaped HIV prevention in England from the 1980s to the PrEP era. Drawing on oral histories and archival sources, I examine the contested meanings of sexual risk, personal responsibility and collective care, and how communities have influenced biomedical knowledge and public health responses. My work challenges accounts that reduce HIV prevention to individual choice or treat biomedicalisation as a process imposed on passive patients. Instead, it foregrounds the agency, solidarity, intimacy and political negotiations through which people engage with prevention technologies.

Prefigurative biopolitics and community participation

A central strand of my work examines the capacity of communities to shape the conditions under which health knowledge, medicines and care are produced and accessed. I develop the concept of prefigurative biopolitics to explore how community-led practices may anticipate and help bring about alternative forms of biomedical governance. This interest builds on my research into PrEP commodity activism in England, which shows how activists combined pharmaceutical sourcing, digital peer support and public health advocacy to expand access while also confronting the limits of market-based provision. My work considers the tensions between individual agency, collective action and structural inequality without assuming that self-management is necessarily emancipatory.

Publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Calkin, S. and Martinez-Lacabe, A. (2026). Informal PrEP: Rethinking approaches to pharmaceutical access and HIV prevention pathways. Global Public Health, 21(1), 2709640. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2026.2709640

Martinez-Lacabe, A. (2025). Beyond the neoliberal label: A historical perspective on sexual actors and responsibility in HIV prevention in England (1986–2023). Health, 29(2), 220–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634593241238862

Martinez-Lacabe, A. (2021). The PrEP response in England: enabling collective action through public health and PrEP commodity activism. Critical Public Health, 31(2), 226–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2020.1844152

Martinez-Lacabe, A. (2019). The non-positive antiretroviral gay body: the biomedicalisation of gay sex in England. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 21(10), 1117–1130. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2018.1539772

Edited book

Lee, P.-H., Martinez-Lacabe, A. and Tseng, Y.-C. (eds.) (2026). Feeling Taiwan: Emotions in Everyday Politics, Social Movements, and Research. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003661719

Book chapter

Lee, P.-H., Martinez-Lacabe, A. and Tseng, Y.-C. (2026). Introduction: Why Emotion Matters in Rethinking Taiwan Studies. In Feeling Taiwan. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003661719-1

Book reviews

Martinez-Lacabe, A. (2021). Review of AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, edited by Jih-Fei Cheng, Alexandra Juhasz and Nishant Shahani. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 5(2), 34. https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/11171

Public Engagement

My research has been presented at international conferences and interdisciplinary events, including AIDS 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, Freie Universität Berlin and the London School of Economics.

I am a member of the guest editorial team for a special issue of Social Science & Medicine on digital spaces and do-it-yourself health.

I have co-convened academic events including After PrEP: Ethical Sexualities, Viral Memories, and New Socio-Medical Landscapes in HIV Prevention (University of Sussex, 2016), and contributed to community discussions on HIV prevention in Bilbao and Pamplona. My public engagement has also included an interview with British Vogue.