Viviane K. Namaste is a Canadian feminist professor at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research focuses on sexual health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and sex work.
Namaste received a BA from Carleton University in 1989, an MA in Sociology from York University, and a doctorate from Université du Québec àMontréal in Semiotics and Linguistics. She worked within ACT UP Paris. In 2001, she received the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for her book titled, Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. That same year, Namaste was also a director in the documentary Madame Lauraine's Transsexual Touch which deals with transsexual sex workers as well as sexual health and clientele.
In 2005, Namaste published a book titled Sex Change, Social Change, a collection of papers and interviews dealing with issues faced by transsexual communities, including sex work, HIV/AIDS, access to medical resources, anglocentrism, and other problems in media and scholarship. In 2011, the book received a significantly longer second edition, expanding on many of the same issues and exploring new ones.
Namaste became an associate professor and the Research Chair in HIV/AIDS and Sexual Health at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In 2009, she received the "Canadian Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights", awarded jointly by the HIV Legal Network and Human Rights Watch.
In 2013, she was called as an official intervenor in a hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada on whether the ban on solicitation, prohibition of brothels and criminality of making a living from prostitution violates the Charter of Rights.
The feminist journal, ', has called Namaste's work, "extremely important".
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