Dr Kiran Pienaar
Kiran Pienaar graduated from Rhodes University in 2006 with a Master’s degree in Linguistics and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She has a PhD in Gender Studies and Sociology from Monash University, Australia. Kiran is also an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS), La Trobe University. She has expertise in gender and sexuality studies, and health sociology, with a focus on LGBTQ identities and cultures; the politics of gender, sexuality and the body; narcofeminisms, drugs and the self; and the social dimensions of health. She has published widely on topics related to gender, drugs, ‘addiction’ and the self; biopolitics, public health and drug policy. Her first book Politics in the Making of HIV/AIDS in South Africa was published by Palgrave and in 2023 she published a co-edited collection titled Narcofeminisms: Revisioning Drug Use. Inspired by narcofeminist activism, it considers the political potential of drug consumption as a mode of resistance to dominant social orders.
Select publications (2020-2024)
Pienaar, K., Kelaita, P., & Murphy, D. (2024). COVID-19 and the biopolitics of stigma in public housing: dividing practices and community boundaries in pandemic times. Health Sociology Review, 1–16 (Open access), doi: 10.1080/14461242.2024.2390019
Murphy, D., Race, K., Pienaar, K. & Lea, T. (2024). HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and chemsex event-networks. Body & Society, doi: 10.1177/1357034X241298173
Gupta, M., Bogatyreva, K., Pienaar, K., Hassan, B. & Bennett, C. (2024). The timing of local SARS-Cov-2 outbreaks and vaccination coverage during the Delta wave in Melbourne. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 48(4),100164 (Open access), doi: 10.1016/j.anzjph.2024.100164
Barnett, A., Pienaar, K., et al (2024). The dynamics of more-than-human care in depot buprenorphine treatment: A new materialist analysis of Australian patients’ experiences. International Journal of Drug Policy, 127, 104399 (Open access), doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104399
Fomiatti, R., Pienaar, K., Savic, M., Keane, H. & Treloar, C. (2023). Improving understandings of trauma and alcohol and other drug-related problems: A social research agenda International Journal of Drug Policy, 121, 104198, doi: 0.1016/j.drugpo.2023.104198
Dennis, F. & Pienaar, K. (2023). Refusing recovery, living a ‘wayward’ life: A feminist analysis of women’s drug use. The Sociological Review (Monograph Series), Narcofeminisms: Revisioning Drug Use 71(4): 781–800. doi: 10.1177/00380261231175729
Dennis, F., Pienaar, K. & Rosengarten, M. (2023). Narcofeminism and its multiples: From activism to everyday minoritarian practices. The Sociological Review (Monograph Series), Narcofeminisms: Revisioning Drug Use 71(4): 723–740, doi: 10.1177/00380261231174962
Dennis, F., Pienaar, K. & Rosengarten, M. (2023). Afterword: Tensions and possibilities for a narcofeminist sociology. Narcofeminisms: Revisioning drug use. The Sociological Review (Monograph Series), Narcofeminisms: Revisioning Drug Use 71(4): 945–954, doi: 10.1177/00380261231174978
Petersen, A. & Pienaar, K. (2023). Competing realities, uncertain diagnoses of infectious disease: Mass self-testing for COVID-19 and liminal bio-citizenship. Sociology of Health & Illness, special issue on the sociology of diagnosis, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13694
Savic, M., Barnett, A, Pienaar, K. et al. (2023). Staying with the silence: Silence as affording care in online alcohol and other drug counselling. International Journal of Drug Policy, 116, 104030, doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2023.104030
Fomiatti, R., Toffoletti, K., & Pienaar, K. (2023). Rethinking Women’s ‘Performance and Image-Enhancing Drug Consumption’: An Agenda for Ontopolitically-Oriented Research. Contemporary Drug Problems, doi:10.1177/009145019231154938
Kelaita, P., Pienaar, K., Keaney, J., Murphy, D., Vally, H. & Bennett, CM. (2023). Pandemic policing and the construction of publics: an analysis of COVID-19 lockdowns in public housing. Health Sociology Review, 32(3): 245–260, doi: 10.1080/14461242.2023.2170260
Pienaar, K. & Petersen, A. (2021) Searching for diagnostic certainty, governing risk: Patients’ ambivalent experiences of medical testing. Sociology of Health & Illness, 44(1): 25–40, doi:10.1111/1467-9566.13391
Pienaar, K., Flore, J., Powers, J. & Murphy, D. (2021). Making publics in a pandemic: Posthuman relationalities, ‘viral’ intimacies and COVID-19. Health Sociology Review, 30(3): 244–259, doi:10.1080/14461242.2021.1961600
Race, K., Murphy, D., Pienaar, K., & Lea, T. (2021). Injecting as a sexual practice: Cultural formations of ‘slamsex’. Sexualities, doi:10.1177/1363460720986924
Farrugia, A., Waling, A. Pienaar, K. & Fraser, S. (2021) The ‘be all and end all’? Young people, online sexual health information, science and skepticism. Qualitative Health Research, 31(11): 2097–2110, doi:10.1177/10497323211003543
Flore, J. & Pienaar, K. (2020) Data-driven intimacy: Emerging technologies in the (re)making of sexual subjects and ‘healthy’ sexuality, Health Sociology Review, 29(3): 279–293, doi:10.1080/14461242.2020.1803101
Barnett, A. Savic, M., Pienaar, K., Carter, A., Warren, N., Sandral, E., Manning, V. & Lubman, D. (2020). Enacting ‘more-than-human’ care: Clients’ and counsellors’ views on the multiple affordances of chatbots in alcohol and other drug counselling. International Journal of Drug Policy, 94: 102910, doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102910
Farrugia, A., Pienaar, K., Fraser, S., Edwards, E. & Madden, A. (2020). Basic care as exceptional care: addiction stigma and consumer accounts of quality healthcare in Australia. Health Sociology Review, 30(2): 95–110, doi: 10.1080/14461242.2020.1789485
Pienaar, K., Petersen, A. & Bowman, D.M. (2020). Managing risks or generating uncertainties? Ambiguous ontologies of testing in Australian healthcare. Health, 25(6): 669–687, doi:10.1177/1363459320912830
Pienaar, K. Murphy, D.A., Race, K. & Lea, T. (2020). Drugs as technologies of the self: Enhancement and transformation in LGBTQ cultures. International Journal of Drug Policy, 78(April 2020): 102673. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102673
Last Modified: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 10:33:50 SAST