Monica Barratt

I am a social scientist working at the Social Equity Research Centre and Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University as Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow. I also hold a visiting appointment at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), UNSW Sydney.

My research investigates psychoactive drug use in digital society. I am particularly interested in how digital technologies and the cultures they sustain are transforming longstanding social problems like illicit drug use. My work crosses a variety of disciplines, including sociology and criminology alongside epidemiology and public health.

My expertise is in research (and I'm a research methods and ethics nerd!). But I don't want to just do research for the sake of it. I believe that people who use drugs have a right to access the best health interventions and care, and the most accurate information, as possible. In my work I have developed partnerships with people most affected by drug policy, that is, people who themselves currently take drugs in the settings I am investigating, and in some cases, their families and friends. I believe it is critical to do research and construct policy *with* these groups, not *for* them.

My recent work has been funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Early Career Research fellowship and by NHMRC, US National Institutes of Health, New Zealand's Marsden Foundation and Australian Institute of Criminology project grants.

I also hold the following appointments: Australian Research Lead, Global Drug Survey; Executive Director, Bluelight.org; Lead for Research and Victoria, The Loop Australia; Associate Editor, International Journal of Drug Policy; Deputy Editor, Drug and Alcohol Review.