My current project focuses on the phenomenon of 'British Bronchitis' in the north west of England from the 1930s to the 1950s. Methods include using the Worktown Mass Observation archives held at the University of Sussex and digitised at the British Library.  Related to this I wrote a review of The Pub and The People which appeared in the Classics Series of Addiction in August 2020.   Another project investigates drug-related deaths in English prisons from 2003-2022, focusing especially on 2015-2020. This is in collaboration with Karen Duke and other colleagues at DARC, Middlesex University London. Methods include analysis of PPO reports on non-natural deaths. A presentation on this will be given at the Lisbon Addictions Conference in November 2022. A related publication in press is a chapter 'Risk, intoxication and death: contemporary media framing of drug-related deaths' (with Betsy Thom) in a Handbook on Intoxication to be published by Routledge, edited by Geoffrey Hunt et al, 2022. 

I recently published a review for Society published online in July 2022 of Johan Hari's book Chasing the Scream (Bloomsbury 2019 pbk) and co-edited a collection (with Betsy Thom) published by Routledge in 2020 entitled Risk and Substance Use: Framing dangerous people and dangerous places.

My book The Politics of Drugs: perceptions, power and policies was published in September 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan. In preparing some of the work for this, I was supported by The Leverhulme Trust from 2007 to 2010 as an Emeritus Fellow in the Centre for History in Public Health. 

For nearly ten years I was Programme Coordinator for the UK Department of Health (Policy Research Programme) Drugs Misuse Research Initiative. Phase One of this programme (total budget £2.4 million) ran from 2000 to 2005 and included projects on treatment, co-morbidity/dual diagnosis, young people and waiting lists. Phase Two, entitled ROUTES (research on understanding treatment experiences and services) and valued at £1.2 million, began in 2005 and continued to 2009. ROUTES focused on experiences of treatment and service configuration and on children, young people, families and communities. I edited a collection based on this programme of research published by Routledge -  Responding to Drug Misuse: research and policy priorities in health and social care (2010). 

Related to this research in the addictions field, I co-edited, with Betsy Thom of Middlesex University, a six volume collection of Major Works in Drug and Alcohol Studies published by Sage in December 2013. I also contributed a chapter on 'Public health approaches to drugs and alcohol: a critique' in the  Handbook of Drug and Alcohol Studies edited by Kolind,Thom and Hunt Sage 2017. 

Earlier, I completed work on a project funded by the Department of Health (Policy Research Programme) to evaluate their national Alcohol Improvement Programme (with Middlesex University and York University). The final report on this project was submitted to DH in April 2012 co-written with Betsy Thom, Charlie Lloyd, Rachel Herring, Christine Godfrey, Jordan Tchilingirian and Paul Toner. Three articles from this project were published in refereed journals. 

In a different field - comparative social policy - I was a member of an international collaborative project Towards Universal Social Security in Emerging Economies co-ordinated by UNRISD. My working paper on Welfare: theoretical and analytic paradigms is on the UNRISD website. My chapter 'Universalism and Health: the battle of ideas' was published in 2017 in a collection Towards Universal Health Care in Emerging Economies: opportunities and challenges edited by Ilcheong Yi, Palgrave Macmillan.

I chaired the Research and Evaluation Group for the University of Bedfordshire Alexi Project on developing services for children and young people at risk of sexual exploitation which completed its work in summer 2017.