About

About our research

We are a multi-disciplinary team working collaboratively to highlight the reality and complexity of substance use for individuals, families, communities and the wider public.

Our research informs and is led by policy and practice concerns, and involves a wide range of community partners.

And we have a well-developed practice and international reputation for co-producing research with people with lived experience

We bring together academics and postgraduate students from disciplines including sociology, criminology, nursing, public health, social work, mental health, chemical analysis, social care and psychology.

Our wider international network encompasses academics, people with lived experience, practitioners and policymakers from across the UK, Europe, North and South America and Australia.

Meet the team

See contact details, publications history, specialisms and more.

Our expertise

We conduct research and apply it to policy and practice on a range of topics, including:

  • end of life care for people using substances and their families
  • homeless populations
  • people engaged in the criminal justice system
  • anabolic steroids and associated image and performance enhancing drugs
  • drug and alcohol policy
  • domestic and sexual abuse
  • children and young people 
  • drug markets and trends

Our research informs both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in sociology, criminology, social work and social care.

We also supervise postgraduate research students, with recent PhD topics focusing on:

  • the impact of parental substance use on children and young people
  • reasons for non-attendance at community alcohol services
  • an ethnographic study with people who use and supply cannabis
  • women’s use of online sober communities

Contacts, publications and responses