Meet our team

Dr Marija Pantelic
Lecturer in Public Health

Marija is a Lecturer in Public Health at BSMS. Prior to joining BSMS she was a Senior Advisor for Research and Evaluation 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 International Scientific Advisory Board for the AIDS Impact Conference; and member of the Technical Working Group of the Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate HIV-related Stigma and Discrimination. 

Dr Marija Pantelic's full profile >

Georgina Caswell
Head of Programmes, GNP+

Georgina Caswell is Head of Programmes at GNP+, based in Cape Town, South Africa. Georgina supports all GNP+ programmes – pushing for the leadership of people living with HIV, fighting stigma and advocating for quality treatment and good health for all. She is a gender advocate who champions youth leadership and has previously managed large-scale youth sexual and reproductive health and rights programmes.

Prof Carrie Llewellyn 
Professor of Applied Behavioural 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.

Prof Carrie Llewellyn's full profile >

Aditi Sharma
Activist

Aditi is an activist. She has campaigned on global environment, development and human rights issues. Over the past 20 years, she has focused on HIV, gender and human rights, working in solidarity with people living with HIV and their communities.

Jessica Whitbread
Global Community Engagement Consultant

Jessica Whitbread MES is an established advocate and global movement builder focusing on the intersections of gender and HIV for over 15 years. As a Global Community Engagement Consultant, Jessica works with the Beyond LIVING Partnership supporting the GNP+, ICW and Y+ Global teams. 

Thara Wielaart
Assistant Project Manager

Thara Wielaart has studied at the VU University and the University of Amsterdam and obtained her master degrees in Business administration, with a focus on the sustainable development goals and in Political science, with a focus on political violence in the Middle-East. She has been working as assistant project manager for GNP+ for nearly 2 years and is currently managing projects around global youth participation in the HIV respons.

Zara Coombes 
Year 4 student, BSMS 

Zara Coombes is a fourth-year medical student at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS). She is a research assistant for Resilience+, and is particularly interested in researching the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to healthcare and antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV. Zara is looking forward to overcoming the confines of the pandemic by using the video diary method to learn from people living with HIV globally. She is currently studying and working as a health care assistant in ICU during the COVID-19 pandemic. Zara’s career interests include sexual health, psychiatry and emergency medicine. Zara is the president of BSMS’ Refugee Support Society and is involved with healthcare advocacy for displaced people locally.

Poppy Barnard 
Postgraduate student, BSMS

Poppy is a Masters student in Public Health at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Before this, she worked at Reading Borough Council for two years in various departments, including Public Health, Policy, and Adult Social Care; whilst volunteering in her spare time with a mental health charity supporting young people under the age of 25. She also worked at Westminster City Council in the Children's Social Care department for a year, providing information and guidance to social workers responsible for asylum seeking children who had entered the UK on their own. Her first degree was a 3 year course in Sociology at Aston University, completing her dissertation exploring the double stigma of postnatal depression. This university course, alongside volunteering in the healthcare and education sectors, sparked her interest in social justice and the importance of celebrating the diversity of marginalised communities.

Professor Collins Iwuji 
Professor of Global Health and HIV Medicine

Collins’ broad research interest is on HIV treatment outcomes in resource-constrained settings and sexually transmitted infections. He is particularly interested in the use of ART for the prevention of sexual transmission of HIV having undertaken the first population-based clinical trial in the world evaluating the impact of ART on HIV incidence in rural South Africa.

Dr Collins Iwuji's full profile >

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 >