[audio http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/local/overnights/201402/r1236120_16345757.mp3 ] After the February 2014 death of American actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, ABC Radio’s ‘Talking Point’ program hosted an hour-long special dedicated to a discussion of addiction and injecting drug use. With SSAC’s Dr Kate Seear as the program’s expert guest, host Rod Quinn explored a series of issues. In a wide-ranging discussion, Dr Seear…
Are you interested in studying addiction from a social science point of view? The Social Studies of Addiction Concepts Research program (SSAC) invites expressions of interest from suitably qualified candidates for a PhD scholarship in qualitative research on addiction. The scholarship will be based in Melbourne, Australia. The scholarship will carry an annual tax-free stipend…
How do Australian alcohol and other drug (AOD) policies define and respond to issues of drug use and addiction? How do the objectives made explicit in these policies relate to the implicit assumptions about drugs and drug problems also at work in them? These questions underpin one of SSAC’s largest research projects: an ARC-funded international…
How are the neurosciences reshaping notions of addiction? What will their legacy be? Is public opinion behind brain science accounts of addiction? SSAC program leader Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser was invited to consider these questions at a recent conference held at the University of Queensland (UQ). Run by UQ’s Neuroethics Group (UQ Centre for Clinical…
Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser, leader of the Social Studies of Addiction Concepts (SSAC) program at Australia’s National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) today launched the program’s new logo and website. Speaking from NDRI’s office in Melbourne, Australia, Fraser explained that the SSAC program was designed as a new global initiative to connect addiction…
A team of researchers led by SSAC’s Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser has been awarded $499,000 by the Australian Research Council to conduct research into lived experiences of addiction in Australia. This project, entitled ‘Experiences of addiction, treatment and recovery: An online resource for members of the public, health professionals and policy makers’, is the first…
What is the nature of the link between alcohol, other drugs and crime? Is there a causal link between drug and alcohol consumption and rape? And if there is a link between alcohol and violence, how should we respond? SSAC staff recently took up these questions in a piece written for the Australian academic news website…
SSAC research fellow Dr Kate Seear presented a paper at the Biopolitics of Science and Medicine Symposium, held on Friday November 29th 2013 at Monash University’s Caulfield Campus. Dr Seear presented findings from a new national pilot study (being undertaken in conjunction with Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser) that explores legal approaches to addiction, especially those…
People who experience ‘problematic’ substance use or ‘addiction’ feature prominently in the criminal justice system, typically as offenders. Importantly, however, ‘addicts’ and other ‘problematic’ consumers of alcohol and other drugs also appear in criminal justice systems in other guises, including as the victims of crime. All Australian states and territories operate legislative schemes designed to…
NDRI’s SSAC staff played a key role in a recent international conference on drugs and addiction. The international journal Contemporary Drug Problems (CDP) held its second bi-annual conference from 21st to 23rd of August, 2013, with the theme Complexity: Researching alcohol and other drugs in a multiple world. Associate Professor Suzanne Fraser was a conference…
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