Katherine Lepani, BA (University of Hawai‘i at Manoa), MPH (Queensland), PhD (ANU)
Visiting Fellow, Gender Relations Centre

Email: katherine.lepani@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Katherine is a long-term resident of Papua New Guinea, where she has extensive community-based and public sector work experience in primary health care, HIV, gender and development, and theatre arts. She coordinated the development of PNG’s first national multi-sectoral strategy for responding to HIV and currently serves as an adviser for Sanap Wantaim, the AusAID-funded HIV and AIDS support program in Papua New Guinea. Katherine holds a Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology) degree awarded with Distinction from the University of Hawai‘i (1991), and a Master of Public Health (Tropical Health) degree from the University of Queensland (2001). She received the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine Medal in 2001 for her MPH thesis. A recent PhD student in the Gender Relations Centre, she was awarded her doctorate in February 2008. Her PhD thesis, “In the process of knowing”: Making Sense of HIV and AIDS in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, explores the interface between biomedical and cultural models of sexuality, risk, and disease and argues for the importance of community engagement in responding to the HIV epidemic. Her current research interest in HIV focuses on gender vulnerabilities, perceptions of risk, and the social context of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) services in Papua New Guinea. She is a lecturer in Social Foundations of Medicine in the ANU College of Medicine and Health Sciences and teaches qualitative methods for health research in the Master of Culture, Health, and Medicine program.  

Research Interests

Gender and sexuality, gender and development, critical medical anthropology, HIV and culture, health communication, interdisciplinary and applied research, public health policy, Papua New Guinea.

Key Publications

• Lepani, Katherine. 2008. Fitting condoms on culture: Rethinking approaches to HIV prevention in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. In Making Sense of AIDS: Culture, Power and Sexuality in Melanesia. Edited by Leslie Butt and Richard Eves. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• Lepani, Katherine. 2008. Mobility, violence, and the gendering of HIV in Papua New Guinea. Special Issue on Modern Men: Continuities and Ruptures in Australia and the Pacific, edited by John P. Taylor. The Australian Journal of Anthropology19 (2):150-164.
• Lepani, Katherine. 2007. Sovasova and the problem of sameness: Converging interpretive frameworks for making sense of HIV and AIDS in the Trobriand Islands. Special Issue on HIV/AIDS in Rural Papua New Guinea, edited by Alison Dundon and Charles Wilde. Oceania 77(1):12-28.
• Lepani, Katherine. 2006. Report on the First National Summit on HIV Prevention, Papua New Guinea. National AIDS Council and UNAIDS.
• Lepani, Katherine. 2005. “Everything has Come Up to the Open Space”:Talking about Sex in an Epidemic. WorkingPaperSeries, Gender Relations Centre, ANU, Canberra, No. 15, 24 pp. http://rspas.anu.edu.au/grc/publications/pdfs/WPS_15_Lepani.pdf
• Lepani, Katherine. 2005. Review of Decolonising the Mind: The Impact of the University on Culture and Identity in Papua New Guinea, 1971-74, by Ulli Beier, Pandanus Books, Canberra, Journal of Pacific History 41(1): 114-15.
• Lepani, Katherine. 2004. Review of Conceiving Cultures: Reproducing People and Places on Nuakata, Papua New Guinea, by Shelley Mallett, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5(3): 287-90.
• Lepani, Katherine. 2004. Concept Paper on HIV/AIDS High Risk Settings Strategy, Focal Point Project Analysis. Save the Children in Papua New Guinea.
• Lepani, Katherine. 1996. Children, Women, and Families in Papua New Guinea: A Situation Analysis. Port Moresby: Government of Papua New Guinea and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).