Drawing on institutional history, biography, and interviews with key informants from the range of academic disciplines that have contributed to the Australian response to the HIV and AIDS epidemics, this article provides critical insights into the factors that have shaped the Australian research response. The author demonstrates conflicts between disciplines that are rooted in epistemological differences. While the conflicts and tensions are often expressed in terms of access to resources, the disputes are grounded in the relative power of academic disciplines, most particularly the preeminence of biomedicine, and are related to the weight attributed to the various knowledge claims of those disciplines.
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