External Advisory Board

• Graham England, Chair of Board, Chief Executive Officer, Addiction Recovery Agency (ARA)

  Graham England has been CEO at Ara for 5 years. He is an expert in the health and social care sector, with 20 years’ experience in third sector organisations, 5 years within local authority social services departments, and 3 years within the NHS. He has considerable experience in service development, delivery and commissioning. He also has substantial skills, knowledge and experience from working in the fields of problem gambling, substance misuse, early interventions, young people’s services, supported housing and mental health services in a range of settings (including community services, residential, and criminal justice environments).
• Tobias Hayer, University of Bremen, Head of the Gambling Research Unit

  Tobias Hayer is a psychologist and has been working as a researcher at the University of Bremen since 2001. His research focuses on various facets of gambling addiction, the prevention of gambling-related problems, the evaluation of the effectiveness of selected youth and gambler protection measures, the risk potential of individual forms of gambling, and risk and problem behaviour in adolescence. Tobias is the author of numerous research papers dealing with gambling and gambling addiction. Other scientific activities include an expert support for a federal model project entitled "Early Intervention in Pathological Gambling" (completed in 2010) and a current membership of the expert advisory board of the State Gambling Treaty Administrative Agreement. All further relevant information on Tobias' scientific expertise can be found at http://www.tobha.de.
• Jane Rigbye, CEO YGAM

  Dr Jane Rigbye, Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, is the CEO of The Young Gamers and Gamblers Education Trust (YGAM), a charity with the social purpose to inform, educate, and safeguard young people against gaming and gambling harms. Prior to her current appointment, Jane was Director of Prevention at GambleAware, responsible for commissioning treatment and education services to prevent gambling harms across Britain. She was also previously Head of Youth Services and Policy Development at GamCare. Her doctoral dissertation in the psychology of gambling explored barriers to treatment access amongst young people experiencing symptoms of gambling disorder. She has lectured on gambling studies at the University of Salford and at Nottingham Trent University, and has published a range of academic and consultancy papers on gambling and gambling harms.
• Simon Chadwick, Founder, The Future Sport Forum

  Simon Chadwick has a background in marketing, commercial strategy, and government policy, and has published in journals including the Sloan Management Review, the Journal of Advertising Research and European Sport Management Quarterly. He works with a wide range of stakeholders in sport including clubs (such as Manchester United), governing bodies (such as UEFA) and sponsors (such as Coca Cola). Chadwick has secured more than £3 million in research funding from the likes of the European Union, the Qatar National Research Fund and Mastercard. In undertaking research and delivering related outcomes, the professor is a strong advocate of impact and public engagement. He routinely writes for global media outlets (e.g. the Wall Street Journal and CNN) and has worked with numerous organisations.
• Lee Kah-Wee, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Singapore

  Lee’s work explores the relationship between space and power, particularly through the lenses of modern professional areas such as architecture, urban planning, law and public administration. He is the author of Las Vegas in Singapore: Violence, Progress and the Crisis of Nationalist Modernity (NUS Press, 2019), a history of the control of vice that casts a critical light on the pastoral image of Singapore’s contemporary political and urban landscape. Lee’s work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (New York), the Center for Gaming Research (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation (North America Chapter), and the Ministry of Education (Singapore). He will contribute to the Hub with a specialised perspective on built environment, urban development, and state regulation around casino-gambling industries.
• Ruth Persian, Principal Advisor Financial Behaviour and Gambling Research, Behavioural Insights Team

  Ruth Persian heads up the Behavioural Insights Team's (BIT) Gambling Policy Research Unit (GPRU) and leads BIT's work on financial behaviour. The GPRU is a four-year research programme funded by a Regulatory Settlement fund via the Gambling Commission. The unit conducts research to reduce harm from gambling and to make the UK gambling market the most safely regulated in the world. Ruth has in-depth experience designing and evaluating behavioural insights interventions, having worked on behavioural insights projects with partners in the public and private sector on topics ranging from financial inclusion to revenue collection. She previously oversaw BIT UK’s research in international programmes, education and home affairs. She studied Economics and Political Science at the University of Tübingen and the University of Cape Town and holds a Master’s in Economics from Oxford University
• Fiona Palmer, CEO GAMSTOP

  Fiona Palmer has been CEO of GAMSTOP since 2018. She is a highly experienced social responsibility and compliance director with a long history of working in the gambling & casinos industry. As CEO of GAMSTOP, she worked with others to develop, set up and run this national online self-exclusion scheme to enable consumers resident within the UK to block themselves from being able to gamble on Gambling Commission licensed online sites. In 2020, GAMSTOP was officially accepted by the Gambling Commission. GAMSTOP is used by over 340,000 consumers.
• Haroon Chowdry, Director of Research, Information and Knowledge, GambleAware

  Haroon Chowdry leads the Research function at GambleAware which aims to improve the evidence base on gambling harms, and ensure that GambleAware’s commissioning is led by the best available insights, from data to lived experience. Before joining GambleAware in 2021, he was Director of Evidence at the Office for the Children’s Commissioner where he led programmes of work to transform the evidence base on the prevalence, experiences and outcomes of vulnerable children in England. Prior to that he worked at the Early Intervention Foundation, leading its analysis of the costs and benefits of early intervention programmes as well as its approach to assessing what works.
• Neil Platt, Clinical Director, Beacon Counselling Trust

  Neil Platt is the Clinical Director at the Beacon Counselling Trust, a mental health support provider delivering a wide range of community-based programmes across the North West. Neil leads on the problematic gambling treatment programme, commissioned through GambleAware and GamCare, a programme that will engage with over 2,500 patients this year. He also leads on the Big Deal Young People and Professionals education Programme across the North West, raising awareness and educating young people about gambling-related harms, as well as the professionals that support them. He sits on the Howard League Commission, exploring the relationship between problem gambling and criminality in the UK, the NIHR football fans and betting research programme and is a Winston Churchill fellow, with his research programme exploring the phenomenon of suicide bereavement and problem gambling.

• Ella Lovibond

  Ella Lovibond is the Sport and Student Development Officer at the University of Bristol Students Union. In her role, she represents all sports clubs, societies and student groups to make sure their voice is heard when decisions that impact students are made.
• Fiona Nicoll

  Professor Nicoll’s research themes include: the politics of art and everyday life, reconciliation, Indigenous sovereignty, racism, public art, nationalism, whiteness gambling policy. Frameworks of analysis include critical gambling studies, critical race and whiteness studies, Indigenous knowledges and STS, theories of aesthetics and cultural history. She is currently Research Chair in Gambling Policy with the Alberta Gambling Research Institute (AGRI). Her latest book Gambling in Everyday Life Spaces, Moments and Products of Enjoyment (Routledge, 2019) adopts a critical cultural studies lens to explore the entanglement of government and gambling in everyday life. As one of the co-editors of Critical Gambling Studies, she is well positioned to assist with consultations, especially about the ways that HSS researchers can assist in understanding, communicating about and preventing gambling related harms.
• Kate Bedford

  Professor Bedford is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in law and political economy. She is currently the Head of Research at the Birmingham Law School. Her work focuses on how law, regulation, and governance shape economies, societies, and subjectivities, as well as the gendered political economy of gambling regulation. Her 2013 ESRC research examined the comparative regulation of bingo which led to a number of academic and non-academic outputs, including a public debate about bingo regulation in the UK, and major policy report exploring Brazil, the UK, the EU, and Canada (https://www.kent.ac.uk/thebingoproject/). She also submitted evidence from the research to the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, as part of their policy work on responsible gambling and online gambling. She will make a significant contribution to the Hub in areas of law and regulation.