Professor Martin Holt

I specialise in HIV prevention research with gay and bisexual men. I'm a social scientist by training, and have worked at the Centre for Social Research in Health since 2003. Over the last 10 years I have investigated the impact of new forms of HIV prevention, particularly pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment as prevention, on community norms, attitudes and practices. I have also been working with colleagues to assess the impact of COVID-19 and now mpox (monkeypox virus) on the communities with whom we work.

I lead the Gay Community Periodic Surveys, the main part of Australia's behavioural surveillance system for HIV, supported by federal and state/territory health funding and NHMRC Partnership Project funding (2021-26). I also lead a long term study of the social aspects of biomedical HIV prevention for gay and bisexual men (the PrEPARE project). I am a chief investigator on a range of other projects, including:

• Evidence-making and implementing interventions in a viral elimination era, ARC Discovery Project led by A/Prof Kari Lancaster
• PRISM: Implementation research to guide the elimination of HIV transmission in NSW, NHMRC Partnership Project led by Prof Andrew Grulich
• Networks in Flux: Examining how sector relationships adapt to rapid change, ARC Discovery Project led by Prof Graham Brown
• Responding to monkeypox virus among gay and bisexual men in Australia (RE:MPXV), led by Dr James MacGibbon
• TraX, national online cohort study assessing monkeypox vaccine and efficacy, led by Prof Andrew Grulich and Dr Mo Hammoud

I am actively involved with the HIV sector, gay community organisations, and professional societies. I have been a Deputy Editor of the Journal of the International AIDS Society since 2013 and an Associate Editor of AIDS and Behavior since 2018.

In 2022, I was appointed as Research Director (Compliance and Capacity Building) in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, UNSW Sydney.