Meet our team

Katie Alford
PhD Student and Research Assistant 

Katie is currently in the third year of her PhD at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, looking at quality of life in people living with HIV and cognitive impairment. Prior to this Katie worked as a research assistant across a number of different research projects in both HIV and mental health in Sussex and London. 

Katie Alford's full profile > 

Dr Shalini Andrews
Consultant in HIV/GU Medicine

Shalini is a consultant in Genitourinary and HIV Medicine. She is the clinical lead for HIV in Surrey and Chair of the Clinical Governance Committee, British Association for Sexual Health and HIV. She has a keen interest in community engagement to tackle stigma around HIV. Shalini has a special interest in sexual dysfunction especially when associated with HIV. She is a member of the BASHH sexual dysfunction special interest group and secretary of the British Society of Sexual Medicine.

Darren Bri

Darren is part of the HIV Peer Mentor Support Team and Talking Together Support Group in the South East. Darren has lived and worked 25+ years abroad and enjoys combining his vast cultural experience and awareness, with his passion for Health and Wellbeing and technology. Supporting all areas of the interlinked mental health and HIV landscape.

Dr Emma Fox
Consultant in Genitourinary / HIV Medicine

Emma is Consultant in Genitourinary and HIV Medicine at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT), and is also the Clinical Director for the service. Emma qualified as a doctor from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals and also completed her specialist training in Genitourinary and HIV Medicine there. She has worked as a consultant at St George’s Hospital and at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals before moving to Kent in 2009. She is interested in all aspects of sexual health and HIV, and has been involved in research into antiretroviral therapy, herpes simplex vaccine, domestic violence, tuberculosis, uptake of HIV testing and medical mentoring.

Jane Hartshorn
PhD Student, University of Kent

Jane is in her third year of a PhD in Poetry: Text, Practice as Research at University of Kent. Drawing upon her own lived experience of Crohn’s Disease, her creative practice is an attempt to include the patient voice in medical discourse. Her pamphlets include Tract (Litmus Publishing, 2017), In the Sick Hour (Takeaway Press, 2020), and Hospital Property (forthcoming with OrangeApple Press). She is poetry editor at Ache Press. @jeahartshorn

Mary Heka

Mary is a volunteer and speaker for the Terrence Higgins Trust’s Positive Voices initiative. She also has a radio show on RadioReverb, Brighton & Hove's local radio station. She is a User Involvement member and an interview panelist.

John Jaquiss
Executive Chairman of TalkHealthtalk Ltd.

John is an HIV Activist with a passion for helping and supporting people with their personal, mental and physical health and wellbeing, seeking to find ways to empower the next Chapter in Health Condition self management. He is an active supporter of up to date education, around HIV and sexual health.

HIV as a Health Condition is a special personal passion for John and key driver for his journey. As an Expert Patient and someone who is living with HIV, he has learnt to embrace his own health and wellbeing and focus on building strong relationships with the really great Healthcare Specialists, who play a key role in helping him keep fit and well.

He is an experienced Managing Director, Consultant and Motivational Coach and has developed an understanding of the behavioural science aspects of business, with a demonstrated history of working in the Health, Wellbeing, Fitness and, Healthcare Sector. He’s also worked in the finance and banking sectors. Away from work his other passions are keeping fit, skiing, travelling, embracing and experiencing different cultures.

Professor Carrie Llewellyn
Professor of Applied Medicine

Professor Carrie Llewellyn is a Professor of Applied Behavioural Medicine, a behavioural scientist and a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is currently Chair of the South East and Central (SEC) Regional Advisory Committee for the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Programme. Carrie has taught undergraduate medical students since 2002 and has twenty years’ expertise in applied, patient orientated research across a range of research designs and analysis: both quantitative (interventional RCTs, cluster RCTs, prospective cohort studies, discrete choice experiments) and qualitative methods and leads a portfolio of applied behavioural research in sexual health, related mainly to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV prevention, in addition to research furthering our understanding of patient’s preferences for health services.

Professor Carrie Llewellyn's full profile >

Dr Marija Pantelic (PI)
Lecturer in Public Health

Marija is a Lecturer in Public Health at BSMS. She is passionate about improving quality of life through research with and for people living with HIV. Prior to joining BSMS she was a Senior Advisor for Research and Evaluation at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (now Frontline AIDS), a global partnership of civil society organisations that work together to mobilise communities against HIV and AIDS. Marija is an associate member of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, Oxford University; member of the Technical Working Group of the Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate HIV-related Stigma and Discrimination; and Trustee of the Martin Fisher Foundation.

Dr Marija Pantelic's full profile > 

Peter Studley 

Peter is currently a volunteer working within drug and alcohol services in Eastbourne and Hastings. Following a 30+ year career producing Live Events, he is now in the process of retraining to become a qualified personal Counsellor. Having lived experience of being HIV+ and the issues associated with the pressures and expectations of the LBGT community, Peter has become passionate about exposing and addressing the mental health issues that still seem to be a taboo subject both within society in general and particularly within the LGBT community itself. 

Dr Mun-Yee Tung
Consultant in Genitourinary

Mun-Yee is a Consultant in Genitourinary and HIV Medicine at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT). Mun-Yee completed her specialist training in Genitourinary and HIV Medicine at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, and she started working as a consultant in Kent in 2007. Her clinical interests include the management of HIV and pregnant women, HIV and Hepatitis co-infection, Sexual Health in prison populations and medical education.

Marc Tweed
Centre Manager, Terrence Higgins Trust South

Marc Tweed is the centre and service manager for Terrence Higgins Trust South based in Brighton. He has 30 years’ experience working within the HIV and LGBT community voluntary sector and is an HIV activist with lived experience of HIV. He is chair of the Public Health Domain Group one group for HIV Prevention and Sexual Health Promotion, Co-chair of the Brighton & Hove Fast Track Cities Innovations in Testing Treatment and Care Group he also sits on the HIV Towards Zero Taskforce and the Sexual Health Programme Board. He has extensive expertise in a broad range of HIV prevention and HIV support interventions and models of delivery including national programmes. His disciplines include socio-biology, Epidemiology, Infectious diseases, public health, quantitative and qualitative research and co-production.

Marc has collaborated on multiple pieces of sector research including most recently development of an app to support local service provision for PrEP in Brighton – based on the EmERGE app which was co-designed and developed as part of a five year European project (www.emergeproject.eu ). Other notable collaborations are EVERYWHERE Project: A European multi-sectoral network for the prevention of HIV/AIDS for men having sex with men. SIALON II: Capacity building in combining targeted prevention with meaningful HIV surveillance among men who have sex with men.  

Professor Jaime Vera  
Professor in HIV Medicine

Jaime has a research interest in ageing and HIV focusing on the study of comorbidities affecting people with HIV, service development for older people with HIV, and interventional studies that aimed to improve quality of life, and well-being of patients with HIV in both low and high income settings.

Professor Jaime Vera's full profile >