Professor Miriam Boeri
Miriam is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bentley University in Massachusetts, USA. Her research among people who use drugs focuses on their social environments and the intersection of socio-economic status, race, and gender over the life course. Miriam has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to study drug use in suburban areas, and currently is conducting a study on the opioid crisis in suburban towns. She has been involved in ethnographic research among marginalized and stigmatized populations for over twenty years, and she is a strong advocate of harm reduction initiatives. Her ethnographic research has produced numerous journal publications and two books: Women on Ice: Methamphetamine Use among Suburban Women and Hurt: Chronicles of the Drug War Generation. Miriam is co-editor of Inside Ethnography: Researchers Reflect on the Challenges of Reaching Hidden Populations, a collection of contributions from twenty-one contemporary ethnographers examining their research with honesty and introspection, while revealing the challenges they faced in the field and strategies used to overcome them.
Dr Fiona Martin
Fiona is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is a sociologist who engages in a theoretically- and critically-informed analysis of health, with a specific focus on drug use, gender, and social marginalization and policy. She is also interested in personhood, contemporary family life and the social organization and significance of other intimate, interpersonal relationships. Fiona’s current research looks cross-culturally at the nexus of relations between families, agencies and the state vis-à-vis the parents who use opioids’ pathways through the health and social care system. She is also currently studying the social, special and policy arrangements that govern pregnant women’s access to opiate substitution treatment in Nova Scotia, the role of Atlantic Canadian addiction treatment services in meeting a range of users’ health and social needs, and the experiences of caregivers for those engaged with the substance use treatment system in Canada. Fiona’s previous research projects have included a critical analysis of the causes and consequences of women’s “substance abuse” as they are framed in epidemiological and clinical literature and an exploration of the social networks and social meanings that inform key moments in drug-using trajectories, with a focus on young pregnant women and mothers in the process of disengaging from injecting drug use.
Professor Thomas McMahon
Thomas is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Child Study at Yale University School of Medicine, Connecticut, USA. He is also the Program Director for the West Haven Mental Health Clinic at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. As a clinician, educator, and researcher, he is broadly interested in developmental perspectives on psychopathology and developmentally informed approaches to clinical intervention offered in community settings. As a clinician, he is interested in the psychological assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and young adults with a history of child abuse or neglect, particularly in the context of parental addiction. As an educator, he coordinates training in clinical child, adolescent, and young adult psychology; and he is actively involved in cross-training on addiction, family process, and child development within the child welfare, child guidance, and addiction treatment systems. As a researcher, he is interested in the impact of drug addiction on family process; and he is involved in the development of family-oriented intervention for men and women affected by drug addiction. Thomas has been the recipient of several grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to explore parenting as a treatment issue for men struggling with drug addiction; and he has been invited to participate in national and international initiatives designed to attenuate the impact of alcohol and drug addiction on family process and child development.
Dr Anna Olsen
Anna is a Senior Lecturer in the Social Foundations of Medicine at the Australian National University Medical School, Canberra, Australia. Her interdisciplinary program of research combines practical and critical approaches to public health, with a particular interest in marginalised populations and qualitative methodologies. Her current research includes: pill testing; opioid overdose prevention; methamphetamine use; drug use and motherhood; domestic and family violence; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health; and ethical practice in social research. She values collaborative approaches to research and has extensive experience working with government and community on evaluation and research projects. Anna teaches and supervises post-graduate students across anthropology, medicine, public health and psychology.
Dr Amy Salmon
Amy is Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She has an extensive career as a researcher, front line worker, and health care administrator, working in a wide variety of areas related to substance use, mental health, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), and social determinants of health. She holds her PhD in Educational Studies from UBC, where she specialized in the Sociology of Education. Amy’s research interests include: evaluation; knowledge mobilization and implementation science; maternal and child health; mental health; substance use; social determinants of health; and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.