Our Team

PhD Candidate and Junior Doctor (She/Her)

Dr Ava Del Tufo is a Junior Doctor and PhD Candidate. Having completed her medical degree at the University of New South Wales in 2023 with Distinction. She completed her 2021 honours thesis on "What does health and wellbeing mean to transgender and gender diverse individuals in rural NSW". This research was later published in CSIRO's Sexual Health Journal in 2023 and presented at the 2023 AusPATH Conference. Ava has a keen interest in rural and remote medicine, emergency medicine and health advocacy with specific interest in transgender and gender diverse population health and sexual health.

Supervisor (She/Her)

A/Prof Bridget Haire is a senior research fellow at the Kirby Institute, and an associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute. She lectures in public health and medical ethics. Prior to academia, Bridget worked in HIV and sexual and reproductive health for more than 20 years as a journalist, editor, policy analyst and advocate. She is a former consultant for the Australia-China Human Rights Technical Co-operation Program on sexual and reproductive health rights for the Australian Human Rights Commission. From 2015-18 Bridget was President of Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) and a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Blood Borne Viruses and Sexually Transmissible Infections. She also served on the Data Safety Monitoring Board for the South African HIV prevention study CAPRISA 008 as a medical ethicist, and is the medical ethicist on the NSW HIV Assessment Panel for People who Put Others at Risk of HIV. Her research interests are ethical issues in infectious disease control with an emphasis on underserved or marginalised populations, gender, and sexual and reproductive health.

Supervisor (They/Them)

Prof Christy E. Newman is a social researcher of health, gender, and sexuality at the Centre for Social Research in Health, and Deputy Dean Research in UNSW Arts, Design and Architecture. Over the last 20 years, Christy has contributed expertise on qualitative social research, critical health sociology, and gender and sexuality diversity to multidisciplinary projects on the social aspects of sexual health, foregrounding community perspectives and partnerships. More recently, this scope has expanded through new collaborations investigating LGBTQIA+ community needs and experiences across reproductive health, digital health, mental health, disability, dementia care, violence prevention, and cancer prevention. Christy is committed to supporting community and peer-led approaches, and to amplifying the voices of populations historically neglected or collapsed into broader population categories, particularly trans and gender diverse people, bi+ and other multi-gender attracted people, and people with innate variations of sex characteristics (intersex).

Supervisor (She/Her)

Dr Rosalind Foster completed her undergraduate and postgraduate training in the UK, followed by higher specialist training in Genitourinary Medicine and HIV medicine. Rosalind was admitted as a Fellow to the Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine (FAChSHM RACP) in 2013. She currently works as a Staff Specialist at Sydney Sexual Health Centre and is a Conjoint Senior Lecturer at the Kirby Institute, Sexual Health Program UNSW