Job title
Senior Lecturer in Psychology
Job responsibilities
In the undergraduate Psychology programmes Gillian teaches second year single honours Statistics, first year Schools of Thought, and her own module Contemporary Issues in Alcohol and Drug Use. At MSc level, Gillian leads a module in Mental Health Epidemiology and teaches on Contemporary Issues in Mental health, Prison, Rehabilitation and Aftercare, and Testing Psychological Theories with Structural Equation Modelling. She also supervises BSc and MSc projects.
Research Centre or Group
Psychological Wellbeing and Mental Health
Research, scholarly and professional interests
Gillian's main research interests include:
- patterns and consequences of alcohol and illicit drug use
- patterns and consequences of polydrug use
- harm reduction approaches to polydrug use
- relationship of polydrug use with wider mental and physical health
- measurement of licit and illicit drug use
- psychology of addictive behaviours
- statistical modelling and psychometrics.
Current projects
Gillian's current research projects include:
- Alcohol use in Sweden/England
- Alcohol consumption and price in Bars in England
- Patterns of substance use in treatment and population data
- Preventing alcohol use problems
- Social capital and substance use
- Tobacco use and mental health
Information for prospective research students
Gillian is keen to supervise research students in any novel area relating to the use of licit or illicit drugs, addictive behaviours and wider mental health. She currently supervises two students in the area of gambling behaviours and has been a statistical advisor on a number of epidemiological and psychiatric/medical PhD programmes. Gillian has particular expertise in the use of large scale epidemiological studies and a wide range of statistical methodologies including structural equation modelling and other regression models.
Information for prospective clients
Gillian W. Smith completed her PhD entitled "Patterns of Polydrug Use in Great Britain: A Latent Class Approach" at the University of Ulster in 2009. She has presented her research at national and international conferences and as an invited speaker including recent talks at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (UNSW, Sydney, Australia) and at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Toronto, Canada). Her interests centre on substance use, behavioural and substance addiction and wider health. Gillian has consultancy experience using regression and latent variable models including confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.
