Born in Brixton in 1955, the remarkable Julian Hows faced early expulsion from school in 1971 due to his advocacy for gay rights. Undeterred, he fled home to join the UK Gay Liberation Front, becoming a participant in London’s earliest Pride marches and other significant protests. Julian shared a communal lifestyle with a group of radical gay men and non-binary individuals in a Notting Hill squat, later relocating to Railton Road, Brixton.
Julian has had a variety of jobs to fund his activism,
In 1974, he joined London for Transport (now TfL) and at other times has worked as a telephone operator, (with BT) a tour guide, managing night clubs and restaurants… and many other things besides.

Julian has been a courageous and dependable figure in LGBT activism since the 1970s and a fervent advocate in the face of the UK’s HIV epidemic, Julian Hows presently collaborates with the HIV Justice Network. This leading community-based non-governmental organization is dedicated to constructing a coordinated and effective global response to HIV criminalization. He has been involved in the response to HIV since the early 80’s, firstly through the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard which provided the first community response to HIV in the UK, and then in international initiatives and activism. In the early 90’s, a few years post his own HIV + diagnosis having buried many friends and lovers but remarkably still finding himself alive, he found ways of getting paid for his activism! In the 90’s worked on projects to empower male sex workers, developing outreach projects for cruising areas, creating a peer advocacy project for PLHIV in London, and continuing international activism.

In this century Julian has worked with PLHIV and activists across the Globe – most noticeably through the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+), spearheading several ground-breaking initiatives, such as the Global Criminalisation Scan, the People Living with HIV Stigma Index, mapping barriers to testing and treatment in Europe., Julian has also been a member of The European Aids Treatment Group since 2018.