Newly launched, SSAC’s Livesofsubstance.org website has two aims: to support people who consider themselves to have an alcohol or other drug addiction, dependence or habit, and to inform the public by sharing personal stories of these experiences. Why this website now? The media has long been filled with stories of drug use and addiction, but these stories often…
SSAC Adjunct and ARC DECRA Fellow Dr Kate Seear was an invited keynote speaker at the 10th Australasian Viral Hepatitis conference on the Gold Coast, Queensland, on 30th September 2016. The conference is the leading multidisciplinary conference on viral hepatitis in Australasia. It brings together researchers, peer advocates and practitioners from across the region to discuss developments in…
What are mandated medico-legal interventions and how can they affect people diagnosed as alcohol or other drug dependent? SSAC adjunct Dr Kate Seear addressed these questions recently in a presentation that formed part of a group of events on mandated medico-legal interventions in Australia. The events were part of a program of work being undertaken by…
Program now available for this event. Since it began in 2013 SSAC has conducted research on a wide range of topics including Australian, Canadian and Swedish alcohol and other drug policy, personal experiences of addiction in Australia, addiction concepts on Twitter, legal interpretations of addiction, the Victorian drug court, compulsory drug treatment in China, and young people in…
How is addiction constituted in Australian law, and how does this compare with Canadian law? This is the focus of Dr Kate Seear’s Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship, which is entitled ‘Addiction in the Australian legal system: A sociological analysis’. A SSAC Adjunct Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Law at Monash University, Kate has recently arrived in…
Having just completed data collection, SSAC PhD candidate Liz Normand is looking forward to tackling the next phase of her project: data analysis. A qualitative study supervised by Dr Robyn Dwyer and Professor Suzanne Fraser, the project’s key research questions are: How do marginalised young people in contact with alcohol and other drug (AOD) services understand their AOD…
SSAC’s purpose is to study, map and monitor ideas of addiction, seeking to illuminate the ways the ‘problem of addiction’ itself is constituted and operationalised in Australian society, culture and politics. Recently, SSAC researchers Dr Robyn Dwyer and Professor Suzanne Fraser began analysing the addiction concepts circulating throughout the social media platform, Twitter. As lead investigator…
In Australia and around the world addiction is defined and rendered measurable with the use of standardised addiction screening and diagnostic questionnaires or ‘tools’. Wherever statements are made about addiction, its effects and appropriate remedies, these tools have played a key part. In 2015, SSAC researchers Dr Robyn Dwyer and Professor Suzanne Fraser began analysing these tools…
Dr Kate Seear, adjunct research fellow with SSAC and Senior Lecturer in Law at Monash University, was recently awarded a prestigious DECRA fellowship by the Australian Research Council. The fellowship will support Kate to conduct a major international study on addiction and the law over the next three years (2016-18). Entitled ‘Addiction in the Australian…
Showcased recently at the 2015 Australian Community Support Organisation (ACSO) international criminal justice conference, the work of SSAC PhD Student, Eliana Sarmiento focuses on the role of drug treatment courts in defining addiction and shaping lives. Held in Melbourne in October, the conference was organised around the thematic question, ‘do prisons change lives?’ Eliana’s project…
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