Honorary Professor Shanthi Ameratunga

Shanthi Ameratunga is an Honorary Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Population Health. A paediatrician and public health physician by background, Shanthi leads a multi-disciplinary research program focusing on trauma outcomes, injury prevention and disability, with a particular interest in issues relating to young people. She is the principal investigator of the YourCall trial, a randomised control trial investigating the effectiveness of a text-based intervention to reduce problem drinking among people admitted to trauma centres. Other projects she has directed include the Traffic Related Injury in the Pacific (TRIP) project, a collaboration with the Fiji School of Medicine funded by The Wellcome Trust and the Health Research Council of New Zealand, and several projects examining causes and outcomes of injuries.

Honorary Professor
Email: s.ameratunga@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 6354

Professor Chris Bullen

Professor Chris Bullen is a public health medicine specialist and Academic Director of the National Institute for Health Innovation (NIHI) at the University of Auckland’s School of Population Health. His research interests focus primarily on tobacco control and innovative smoking cessation interventions. He is a senior author on the latest NZ Smoking Cessation Guidelines and a co-author on Cochrane reviews of nicotine replacement therapy,  e-cigarettes and mobile phones for smoking cessation. Chris led the first international trial investigating the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as an aid to smoking cessation. His current research focuses on innovative ways to scale up tobacco cessation interventions in low and middle-income countries, measuring responses among people who smoke to the policies in New Zealand’s new Tobacco Action Plan and estimating the scale of the illicit trade in tobacco. He is President of the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco.

Professor
Email: c.bullen@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 4730

Dr Grant Christie

Dr Grant Christie, an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, is a Child and Adolescent and Addiction Psychiatrist who has been working in outpatient and residential youth addiction services in NZ and Australia for over 15 years. He is passionate about improving the treatment of young people at risk of addiction and enhancing the management of co-existing problems (CEP) in mental health services and primary care. He has developed a number of youth addiction treatment resources that are used widely in NZ and further afield, and has acted in various advisory roles for the MOH in this area. Principal investigator in the design and testing of the Substances and Choices Scale (SACS), a youth AOD screening and outcome measurement instrument (available on www.sacsinfo.com), Grant has developed brief intervention training packages for primary and secondary health services and is expanding this work to look at youth addiction treatment via internet and app based modalities.

Honorary Senior Lecturer
Email: g.christie@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 9640

Associate Professor Bruce Cohen

A critical sociologist of mental health at the University of Auckland, Dr Cohen is the author of the critically acclaimed books, Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness (Palgrave, 2016) and Mental Health User Narratives: New Perspectives on Illness and Recovery (Palgrave, 2008), as well as the editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health (Routledge, 2018). His work is centrally concerned with analysing the purposes of psychiatric discourse and psy-professional power. Recently becoming Editor of the Palgrave book series, The Politics of Mental Health and Illness, Dr Cohen is currently researching the proliferation of ‘mental health’ discourse in everyday life for his next volume, Selling Mental Health.

Associate Professor
Email: b.cohen@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 9497

Associate Professor Daniel Exeter

Dr Dan Exeter is an Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the University of Auckland. He is a quantitative health geographer and has a background in Geographical Information Systems and spatial analysis. Using large datasets such as the census or routine health databases, his research aims to identify, and provide solutions to inequalities in health. He is currently leading research to deliver a new measure of neighbourhood disadvantage in NZ, and was recently awarded Marsden funding to conceptualise socioeconomic position among the elderly population. He is a co-investigator on the HRC-VIEW programme of vascular risk research, where he leads the mapping component.

Associate Professor
Email: d.exeter@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 4400

Sarah Haldane

Sarah is a Professional Teaching Fellow, in the School of Nursing. Her professional interest lies in improving the care for tangata whaiora with co-existing problems within our mental health and addiction services.

Professional teaching fellow
Email: sarah.haldane@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 5224

Dr Soo Hee Jeong

Soo Hee Jeong is a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland. Her PhD research explored the pharmacokinetics and concentration-effect relationships of cytisine, a medication used to aid smoking cessation. During her post-doc, she has been part of a research team that investigated the influence of dose and dosing frequency on the pharmacokinetics of cytisine. These studies aimed to contribute to the development of an evidence-based dosing schedule of the drug.

Lecturer
Email: s.jeong@auckland.ac.nz

Professor Bridget Kool

Bridget Kool is an injury epidemiologist and has previously focused on the role that alcohol and other substances play in injuries. Although not currently research active in this space, her previous research assessed the effectiveness of mobile phone based interventions to address binge drinking behaviours, a study examining risk factors (including alcohol and recreational drug use) for unintentional injuries at home and a study of unintentional falls at home (working-age population) – exploring the role of alcohol.

Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor Education
Email: b.kool@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 3871

Associate Professor Judith McCool

Judith McCool is Associate Professor, Head of School of Population Health and co-Director for Centre for Pacific and Global Health. Judith’s research interests include, global health, tobacco control, social media, and social determinants of health. She has been a lead investigator on international tobacco control research projects, and is currently co-PI on a survey mental health in Samoa, tobacco industry interference in the Pacific region; primary supervisor for PhD projects including e-cigarette marketing in NZ, digital health and Pacific wellbeing.

Associate Professor
Email: j.mccool@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 2372

Associate Profess Alice Mills

Dr Alice Mills is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Auckland. She holds a PhD in Criminology from the University of Cardiff in Wales, and has over 20 years’ experience of research in prisons and criminal justice with a focus on mental health, addictions and housing. Her UK research experience includes evaluations of prison mental health in-reach teams, compliance and adherence with anti-psychotic medication in prison and the relationship between community organisations and the state in criminal justice.

Since arriving Aotearoa, she has conducted research into specialist courts, including Te Kooti o Timatanga Hou (the Court of New Beginnings), Te Kōti o Rangatahi (Rangatahi courts) and family violence courts. Alice is particularly interested in the interface between mental health/addictions, housing and criminal justice and is currently leading a study examining the links between stable housing and re-offending amongst those who have left prison, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.

Associate Professor
Email: a.mills@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 4505

Dr Tehseen Noorani

I whakapapa to Gujarat though was myself raised in south-east England. I am an interdisciplinary social scientist, currently affiliated with the School of Pharmacy at the University of Auckland. I am a part-time scholar-in-residence at Tactogen Public Benefit Corporation and co-founder of Lentil Lab.

My research focuses on the co-evolving epistemics, therapeutics & economics of two sets of extreme experiences: naturally occurring states of madness/psychosis, and states produced through psychedelic drug use. My PhD (awarded 2012, Bristol University, UK) documented and theorised the expertise-by-experience generated in self-help and peer support groups, particularly in the Hearing Voices Movement. In 2013, I led the first in-depth qualitative study into the use of the psychedelic psilocybin in a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University to help in cigarette smoking cessation.

Since then, I have been tracing the renewed scientific and therapeutic interest in psychedelic experiences, exploring implications for theories of psychopathology and approaches to mental healthcare. This research is situated in the context of medicalisation in the global North and the ongoing ‘war on drugs’. I also focus on methodological issues that arise in the study of psychedelics, partly through convening the interdisciplinary working group, Reimagining Psychedelic Trials.

Honorary Senior Lecturer
Email: tehseen.noorani@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 373 7599

Dr Rhys Ponton

Rhys Ponton is a registered pharmacist and has an extensive history in the treatment of drug misuse. His PhD research involved the characterisation of the processes that drug users in the UK use to prepare heroin and crack cocaine injections. He sat as the pharmacist representative on the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs in the UK chaired by Prof David Nutt. His research interests include the methods used to consume drugs and the risks they pose, prescription and over-the-counter drug misuse, and worldwide drug policy. ​

Senior Lecturer
Email: r.ponton@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 7084

Dr Rodrigo Ramalho

Dr Rodrigo (Rama) Ramalho is the Academic Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Health Sciences in Alcohol and Drug Studies and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Community Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. He holds a PhD in Population Health from the University of Auckland, and he also qualified as a medical doctor and a psychiatrist after gaining degrees at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción in Paraguay. Rama is a psychiatrist and population health scientist with a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach. His main research interests include global mental health, addiction, e-mental health, and cultural safety in mental health and addictions. He is also interested in academic inequities, which particularly affect the Global South.

Senior Lecturer
Email: r.ramalho@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 1443

Dr Ryan San Diego

Ryan San Diego, PhD (Health Psychology, the University of Auckland) is both a practising clinician and a lecturer at the Social and Community Health Unit, School of Population Health/ coordinator of the alcohol & the drugs curriculum at the undergraduate medical programme. Ryan’s PhD involved analyses of developmental risk factors (prenatal, social, and parent smoking and alcohol consumption) in young children’s neurodevelopment, in particular, associations with early executive function and socio-emotional development. Currently, as a behavioural science researcher, he is working and developing research themes in AOD-related areas such as a) Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) skills development in the undergraduate medical programme, b) culture-based/ diversity adaptations in AOD-specific psycho-social interventions, c) illness-recovery in addiction and mental health, and d) mood problems, smoking and drinking patterns in early-onset dementia in aged care settings. Ryan employs a range of methodologies (multivariate analyses, qualitative analyses, and neuropsychological methods) to investigate issues pertinent to addiction and mental health.

Lecturer
Email: r.sandiego@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 8510

Professor Janie Sheridan

Janie Sheridan chaired the Addiction Research Network at the University of Auckland from 2004 and is the past Director and current Associate Director of the Centre for Addiction Research. She has been involved in research into substance misuse for over 21 years and is internationally recognised for her research into the role of community pharmacy in the provision of services to substance misusers.   Her research has a particular focus on harm reduction and the role of primary care with respect to alcohol and drug use, and the development and evaluation of primary care interventions. Recent research includes: ‘legal party pills’ in New Zealand; treatment for methamphetamine addiction; and prescription drug misuse. She has also been involved in the development of a screening and outcomes tool for young people in relation to substance use.

Professor
Email: j.sheridan@auckland.ac.nz

Dr Suzanne Stevens

Dr Suzanne Stevens is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine. Her research focuses on maternal mental health, substance use and the home environment, to better understand how risk and protective factors operate and interact to affect children’s social, behavioural, cognitive and neurodevelopment. She recently completed a pilot study investigating maternal lifestyle factors in pregnancy, focusing on prenatal alcohol exposure, early infant development and bio-behavioural markers of risk. Suzanne also works closely with Professor Trecia Wouldes on the longitudinal NZ Infant Development, Environment and Lifestyle (IDEAL) Study examining the effects of prenatal methamphetamine use on mothers and the development of their children.

Senior Lecturer
Email: s.stevens@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 4511

Dr Kris Taylor

Kris Taylor is a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland – a researcher who thrives in inter-disciplinary and theoretically informed spaces, Kris’s PhD research focused on ideas of pornographic harm, and the ways in which conceptualising pornography viewing as addictive works across different spheres of knowledge (social, cultural, historical, and personal). Specifically, his work on the deployment of an addiction self-diagnosis asks questions about the medicalisation of problematic behaviours, the circulation of therapeutic knowledge between expert and lay fields (especially online), as well as knowledge production and application more broadly. Kris is currently working on developing innovative gendered violence prevention tools and working with young men in Aotearoa around issues of harm, ethics, and social justice

Research Fellow
Email: kris.taylor@auckland.ac.nz

Professor Malcolm Tingle

Malcolm Tingle is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Clinical Pharmacology in the School of Medical and Health Sciences. His research has focussed on the role of metabolism in toxicology and the development of in vitro and in vivo models to assess toxicity. In the field of addiction research, he has examined the pharmacokinetics of ‘party-pill’ constituents BZP & TFMPP and their potential for drug-drug intreactions.  He is jointly supervising a PhD student’s research investigating the pharmacokinetics of cytisine, a natural smoking cessation product and attempting to relate pharmacokinetics to the pharmacodynamic effects of this drug.

Professor
Email: m.tingle@auckland.ac.nz
Phone: +64 (0) 9 923 4949

Associate Professor Robyn Whittaker

Robyn Whittaker is a public health physician and an Honorary Associate Professor in the National Institute for Health Innovation, School of Population Health. Her research interests are in using mobile technologies to deliver health interventions directly to people. This has included text message smoking cessation programmes in NZ, Samoa, Cook Islands and other countries with the WHO ‘Be Healthy Be Mobile’ global NCD initiative. Her programmes have focused on behaviour change techniques that can be delivered using technology, for topics such as depression prevention, weight management, diabetes self-management, cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation. She is also the clinical director of innovation at the Institute for Innovation and Improvement at Waitemata District Health Board. There she is responsible for the Leapfrog programme of strategic projects that have been progressively digitising the hospital workflows.

Honorary Associate Professor
Email: r.whittaker@auckland.ac.nz