Hub academics

Professor Agnes Nairn  
Agnes Nairn is Professor of Marketing at Bristol University Business School.  Her long research career has examined the impact of the many aspects of the commercial world on the wellbeing of children and vulnerable populations.  She is motivated by research that translates to action, particularly for policy.  She is on the DCMS College of Experts, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners Gambling Task Force, and the Gambling Harms Action Lab Steering Group.  Her work on HFSS food and drink and gambling has led to changes in advertising regulations in the UK.  As previous Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at University of Bristol she is particularly concerned with gambling harms at a global level and is heavily involved with the Pan-Africa Gambling Harms Network.

Professor Sharon Collard  
Sharon Collard is a Professor of Personal Finance and Co-Director of the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol. Her research explores the intersections between vulnerability and personal finance including the role of innovation in improving the experiences and outcomes of individuals in vulnerable situations. Her main areas of expertise include financial wellbeing and capability, consumer vulnerability, financial inclusion, consumer credit use and problem debt, and gambling harms research. Her research has been published widely, and she has a strong track record of communicating research to academic and non-academic audiences.

Professor Frank de Vocht  
Frank de Vocht is a Professor in Epidemiology and Public Health, and joined the Centre for Public Health, which is part of Population Health Sciences at Bristol Medical School in 2014. He is funded by the NIHR School for Public Health Research and previously NIHR Applied Research Collaboration West (ARC West). His main research interest includes how best to evaluate the impact of policies and other interventions on public health, and within which he conducts research on the commercial determinants of health including their impact on gambling harms. He also has an interest in the evaluation of radiation on human health.

Professor Michael Banissy  
Michael is Professor of Psychological Science where he is an expert in the science of social connection and interaction. He studies interpersonal communication, emotion, and social determinants of health. He has received awards from the British Psychological Society and the European Society of Cognitive Psychology for outstanding contributions to psychological research. He is also a member of the Royal Society Industry Fellows College and works with organisations to apply psychological science to everyday behaviours and policy. 

Dr Paul Dodson
Paul is a Senior Lecturer in the school of Physiology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience. His current research focusses on understanding the part of the brain thought to be involved in reward and addictive behaviour. His lab is interested in deciphering the messages sent by different types of neuron while making risky decisions.   

Professor Luca Giuggioli 
Luca is Professor in Complexity Sciences in the Department of Engineering Mathematics. He is interested in quantifying when and how certain betting patterns lead to harmful gambling practices. Luca uses predictive mathematical models to describe the behavioural dynamics that lead individuals to place bets online and compare the theoretical outputs to empirical data.

Dr Sam Kirwan
Sam is a Lecturer in the School for Policy Studies with interests in exploring practices, polices and experiences at the intersection of debt and welfare. He brings expertise across three areas to the Hub. The first is carrying out ethnographic research with low-income individuals, the second is in communicating work on financial (and other) harms for broad audiences, and thirdly, his knowledge and expertise on the changing nature of payment, borrowing and investment practices. This background is essential to understanding how gambling practices – including those that may come under the remit of ‘investment’ or ‘leisure’ – are changing in the era of cashless payments and digital bookmakers. 

Dr Jo Large
Jo is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School for Policy Studies. Jo's research focuses on exploring where harm is embedded and often normalised, in the everyday practices of consumer leisure industries. Jo is currently researching the experiences of employees of betting shops in relation to their responsibility for implementing 'safer gambling' practices. 

Professor Emmanouil Tranos
Emmanouil is a Professor of Quantitative Human Geography at the University of Bristol and a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. His research has exposed the spatial dimensions of digital technologies and the digital economy from their early stages onwards. His gambling research focuses on the spatial signature of online gambling behaviour in Britain, and how accessibility to physical gambling outlets affects online gambling behaviours.

Professor Julie MacLeavy 
Julie is a Professor of Economic Geography. Her recent research on austerity and 'pandemic precarity' has focused on the increased financial demands being placed on households and individuals. Through the Research Hub, she is exploring how this heightened financial burden impacts attitudes towards financial risk and the relationships that people have with gambling in their everyday lives. In providing a more comprehensive understanding of how gambling is intertwined with other everyday practices including consumption behaviours, borrowing habits and savings activities, we can consider how the reduction of gambling harms can also improve people's financial wellbeing in these other areas.

Professor Martin Hurcombe 
Martin is Professor of French Studies and the author of three books. He is a specialist of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French cultural history who has written extensively on the relationship between war, culture and politics. His current research focuses on representational practices in sports writing and journalism. He is currently writing a book that explores the history of sports writing through a case study of road cycling in France. He has a particular interest in the ways that emerging technologies have reshaped the way that we talk about and experience sport.