Menu Close
Professor, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University

Professor Robin Room is a sociologist who has directed alcohol and drug research centres in the United States, Canada and Sweden, and now in Australia, his native country. He has been an advisor for the World Health Organisation since 1975, and has received awards for scientific contributions in the U.S., Sweden and Australia, and the premier award in alcohol studies, the Jellinek Memorial Award for Alcohol Studies.

Professor Room has worked on social, cultural and epidemiological studies of alcohol, drugs and gambling behaviour and problems, and studies of social responses to alcohol and drug problems and of the effects of policy changes. He has been part of many cross-national research projects, and is coauthor of 30 books.

He has been president of an international scientific society (Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol) and of the Australian national peak organization of nongovernmental organizations in the field, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia. He is Editor-in-Chief of Drug and Alcohol Review, a major journal in the field.

Experience

  • 2015–present
    Professor and Director, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University
  • 1999–present
    Professor, Centre for Social Research on Alcohol & Drugs (SoRAD), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 2006–2015
    Professor of Social Alcohol Research, Melbourne Svhool of Population and Global Health, University of Mmelbourne
  • 2006–2015
    Director, centre for Alcohol Policy Research, Turning Point Alochol & Drug Centre, Eastern Health
  • 1999–2005
    Director, Centre for Social Research on Alcohol & Drugs (SoRAD), Stockholm University
  • 1991–1998
    Vice-President for Research & Senior Scientist, Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto, Canada
  • 1977–1991
    Scientific Director, National Alcohol Research Centre, Alcohol Research Group, Berkeley, California, USA

Education

  • 1978 
    University of California. Berkeley, Ph.D., Sociology