Biography
I am a Professor of Psychology at the University of Sheffield, and have been active in addiction research for around 25 years. My interests lie in the development and empirical testing of psychological theories of addiction with consideration of the implications of those theories for assessment, prevention, and treatment. For example, I studied the roles of attentional biases, deficits in impulse control, and decision-making in the development of alcohol and tobacco addiction. This included characterising the roles of those psychological factors in the onset of substance use among youth, studying how those factors change during treatment, and evaluating how those factors could be directly targeted to treat addiction.
I have also done more applied work, including development and evaluation of smartphone apps to help people with addiction, working with government to understand the demand for gambling treatment, and working with alcohol charities to understand how public health campaigns can influence drinking behaviour.
My research has been funded by the Medical Research Council and other funders, and I have published more than 200 articles, books and book chapters, including several in Addiction. I have also contributed broader service to the addiction field by serving on editorial boards (including Addiction for 10 years) and grant panels, examining PhDs and specialist postgraduate courses, contributing to media coverage of issues related to addiction, and working with stakeholders including Alcohol Change UK and the Department for Health and Social Care.
