Viviane Namaste

Viviane K. Namaste is a Canadian feminist professor at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research focuses on sexual health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and sex work.

Education and work Namaste received a BA from Carleton University in 1989, an MA in Sociology from York University, and a doctorate from Université du Québec à Montréal in Semiotics and Linguistics. She worked within ACT UP Paris. That same year, Namaste was also a director in the documentary Madame Lauraine's Transsexual Touch which deals with transsexual sex workers as well as sexual health and clientele.

In 2005, Namaste published a book titled Sex Change, Social Change, a collection of papers and interviews dealing with issues faced by transsexual communities, including sex work, HIV/AIDS, access to medical resources, anglocentrism, and other problems in media and scholarship . In 2011, the book received a significantly longer second edition, expanding on many of the same issues and exploring new ones.

Namaste became an associate professor and the Research Chair in HIV/AIDS and Sexual Health at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

In 2013, she was called as an official intervenor in a hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada on whether the ban on solicitation, prohibition of brothels and criminality of making a living from prostitution violates the Charter of Rights.

The feminist journal, Hypatia, has called Namaste's work, "extremely important".