Dr Emily Crick
BA Hons, MSc, PhD
Expertise
I support the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research to build research capacity, increase research income and enhance the impact of research carried out in this space. I also manage the Hub's Research Innovation Fund (RIF).
Current positions
Research Development Associate
School of Geographical SciencesSenior Research Associate Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations
School of Education
Contact
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Biography
I spent over 3 years as a PolicyBristol Associate working with researchers in the Faculties of Arts and Social Science and Law to help them develop the policy impact of their work. I delivered training, carried out horizon scanning and gave advice on how to strengthen research bids and fellowship applications.
In 2008 I started working as a research associate at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, where I contributed to government consultations on alcohol policy and cocaine. I also spent one year as a research assistant at the Global Drug Policy Observatory at Swansea University where I was the lead author for two reports on developments in cannabis policy in the United States.
I completed a PhD in Politics/International Relations at the University of Bristol in 2018. My thesis analysed how drugs have been constructed as threatening to humankind and the State and how these discourses have shaped drug policy and by extension, health, trade, security, criminal justice and social policies. I currently also teach on a 3rd year undergraduate unit, Drugs and Society, in the School for Policy Studies.
My own research and the jobs at PolicyBristol, Transform and GDPO have given me an in-depth understanding of a wide range of factors - from public opinion to UN Conventions - that contribute to the development of policy.
As well as an interest in drug policy, I have written about cricket, identity and peacebuilding in South Asia. I have Masters degrees in South Asian Studies (SOAS) and Security and Development (University of Bristol), and my undergraduate degree was in Historical Studies.
Research interests
Emily has been working as a researcher on drug policy issues since 2008. She spent two years as a research associate at Transform Drug Policy Foundation where she contributed to ‘After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation’. She also spent a year as a research assistant at the Global Drug Policy Observatory based at Swansea University where she wrote briefings on cannabis policy reform in the US.
Emily completed her PhD in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol in 2018. Her thesis title is 'Security and the drug control dispositif: analysing the construction of drugs as an existential threat to humankind and the nation state' and it analyses the securitization of drugs by the UN and the US within a broader dispositif of control. Her examiners were Professor Jutta Weldes (University of Bristol) and Professor Jim Mills (University of Strathclyde).
Emily also has a long-held interest in cricket and peace-building and cricket and identity in South Asia. She has published her research on these areas, for example, Contact Sport: Cricket in India-Pakistan Relations Since 1999 (2009) in the South Asian Survey journal and Cricket and Indian National Consciousness (2007).
Publications
Recent publications
10/10/2022How states have adapted their drug laws within the flexibility of the UN drug conventions to improve the 'health and welfare' of their citizens
Drug Science and British Drug Policy
Re-thinking the 'War on Drugs': Reagan's Militarization of Drug Control
Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory
Count the Costs of the War on Drugs
Count the Costs of the War on Drugs
Selling cannabis regulation: Learning From Ballot Initiatives in the United States in 2012
Selling cannabis regulation: Learning From Ballot Initiatives in the United States in 2012
Legally regulated cannabis markets in the US: Implications and Possibilities
Legally regulated cannabis markets in the US: Implications and Possibilities
Thesis
Security and the drug control dispositif
Supervisors
Award date
25/09/2018
Teaching
More recently, I have been teaching on the third year unit ‘Global Illicit Drug Markets’ that explores how international drug policy has evolved and how it shapes criminal justice and development issues across the world. It aims to give students an advanced understanding of drugs, markets and policy and explore theoretical and real-life issues/research on drugs and policy in different global contexts (e.g. the Global South).
I have also given lectures in the School for Policy Studies, the School of Arts and the School of Psychological Sciences on the development of national and international drug policy.
