Meet the SPOTS team

 

Investigators

  • A/Prof. Peter Saxon (he/him)

    Kia ora, I lead our fantastic research team. I’m an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland School of Population Health trained in epidemiology and public health. My expertise is in HIV prevention and sexual health of men who have sex with men. I’m passionate about health equity for Rainbow communities. To achieve this, I work closely with community organisations and policy makers to make Aotearoa a more inclusive place where we can thrive, as cheesy as that sounds. I want our study to trigger a brighter future: with zero new HIV transmissions and zero unfair discrimination in blood donation policy.

  • Dr Adrian Ludlam

    Kia ora, I am the quantitative data research fellow for the SPOTS Team. I organise the data that our communities have trusted us with and enable it to tell our stories. I’m based at the University of Auckland School of Population Health trained in epidemiology and public health. I studied at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine before undertaking my PhD at the University of Auckland. My expertise is in HIV and sexual health of men who have sex with men, vaccine-preventable disease, health policy, and epidemiology. My drive is to use our data to advocate and achieve health equity for our Rainbow Communities in Aotearoa NZ.

  • Tony Koson Sriamporn (he/him)

    In Thailand and Napier born and raised, now I spend the most of my days as a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, broadly focusing on the blood donation aspect of SPOTS. As a health psychologist researcher, I have worked across Aotearoa’s HIV sector (Body Positive Inc. and Positive Women) and have been involved in HIV research projects (Aotearoa NZ PLHIV Stigma Index) since 2018. I also have been teaching research methods and statistics to psychology and public health students since 2016 at the Universtiy of Auckland.

    I am excited to finally see SPOTS come to fruition. Having watched the project develop over the years, I have the utmost confidence that SPOTS will be delivering impactful research outputs that will greatly benefit our community!

  • ​​​​​Brooke Hollingshead (she/her)

    I am the Head of Policy, Advocacy and Science at Burnett Foundation Aotearoa, and lead a programme of work advocating for Aotearoa New Zealand’s HIV response to be evidence-led and informed by community voices. Having SPOTS is essential in order to understand patterns of behaviour among at-risk populations, including examining where inequities exist and what could be driving them. My background is a mixture of government policy, HIV and COVID-19 research, the Stigma Index, and HIV outreach and testing. My PhD is on the HIV epidemic in the Philippines through the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society.

Collaborators

  • James Bickford (he/him)

    Kia ora koutou, I’m James. I’m from Hamilton in Waikato, but whakapapa back to England. I am the fieldwork coordinator for the team, managing our brilliant army of survey recruiters across the motu, and working with all our stakeholders to ensure that the community is involved as much as possible.

    I joined the team having previously worked as the project coordinator setting up the Disability Health team at Te Whatu Ora Health NZ, and before that I was the environment officer at Canterbury Pride in the UK working to reduce its impact on the environment. Community is at the centre of my kaupapa, being involved with SPOTS is a great opportunity to work with and for the queer community here in Aotearoa, and help feed into wider work around the world.

    Outside of work I’m a Nix supporter, cyclist, and love getting out in te taiao. As a recent transplant to Taamaki Makaurau from Wellington, I’m excited to see more of this part of NZ.

  • Anthony Walton (he/him)

    Kia ora! I’ve worked in Public Health marketing in New Zealand’s HIV space for almost a decade, and in 2025 am joining the SPOTS team remotely from Arizona.

    I’m excited to see how the data gathered from SPOTS is used to build towards a more equitable health system for Aotearoa’s Rainbow community. This data will be incredibly valuable for organisations like Burnett Foundation Aotearoa to really understand where the community is at with sexual health and HIV prevention, so they can design programs with the best evidence at hand and advocate for change. In particular this is an amazing opportunity to gather data that can build towards better health outcomes for our Takatāpui and trans and gender-diverse communities.

  • Dr Carl Webber (he/him)

    I am honoured to have the opportunity to contribute to research in the LGBTQIA+ and sexual health space. I am the post-doctoral qualitative research fellow for the SPOTs team. I analyse qualitative data to understand better the views of gbMSM toward blood donation and the current NZBS MSM-deferral policy.

    My expertise is in the philosophy of language. In my PhD, I examined stigma in health promotion. Drawing on psychological and sociological accounts, I developed a theory of stigmatising speech acts and discussed its implications for gay men and blood donation.

We have been granted ethics approval by HDEC (2024 AM 11450). If you have any ethical concerns about this research, you can contact the health and disability ethics committee (HDEC) on 0800 4 ETHICS or email them at hdecs@moh.govt.nz