The Digital Intimacies project organised a Pandemic Intimacies Roundtable to explore the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and measures to contain it on gay men’s cultures of sex and intimacy.

The event featured presentations and discussion by Jamie Hakim (Digital Intimacies Principal Investigator, University of East Anglia), Joao Florencio (University of Exeter), John Mercer (Birmingham City University), Kristian Møller (IT University of Copenhagen), Marc Thompson (BlackOut, LoveTankUK) and Charlie Witzel (Sigma Research, LSHTM). It was chaired by Ingrid Young (Digital Intimacies Co-Investigator, University of Edinburgh).

The speakers explored relationships between the coronavirus pandemic and gay men’s sexual and intimate lives, asking: how have gay men negotiated social distancing? What sexual health advice have they been receiving? What role has digital media played in all of this? How do existing inequalities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic feed into different gay men’s sexual and intimate lives? And, how has the history of HIV/AIDS informed the collective and individual responses gay men have had to coronavirus?

source