People

Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics (CMVM)

Current research interests: Evaluating interventions and policies on: smoking in the home, young people’s sources of cigarettes, school prevention interventions, the point of sale display ban, reducing inequalities and smoking, and e-cigarettes.

More information on  Professor Amanda Amos's profile

Global Health Policy Unit (CAHSS)

Current research interests: Tobacco industry (including policy influence, strategic and structural links with other unhealthy commodity producers, harm reduction and e-cigarettes); global governance (including WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control; Sustainable Development Goals; trade and investment agreements); health policy (including conflict of interest and Article 5.3; policy coherence.

More information on Professor Jeff Collin's profile

Global Health Policy Unit (CAHSS)

Current research interests: Health inequalities and the social determinants of health; tobacco and health; structural drivers of health inequities including historical and institutional discrimination; the role of commercial actors in non-communicable disease epidemics.

More information on Dr Sarah Hill's profile

Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH), (CSE)

Current research interests: The connections between place and tobacco use, including the environmental context of smoking; the impact of smoking point of sale legislation among youth (Display study); smoking geographies. He is also a founding member of CRESH.

More information on Professor Jamie Pearce's profile

CRESH website

Counselling, Psychotherapy and Applied Social Sciences

Her research interests include: bridging the gap between top-down and bottom-up approaches to health policy and practice through innovative methods and participatory action research; commercial sector involvement in public health policy (tobacco, pharmaceutical, tobacco, alcohol and food industries); community engagement (particularly with the youth, minority ethnic groups and the most disadvantaged in our society).

More information on Dr Marisa de Andrade's profile

A PhD Candidate based in the Global Health Policy Unit (CAHSS). 

Her research interests centre on marijuana policy debates and change (including how frames, beliefs, institutions and their interactions shape decisions and non-decisions in policymaking); horizontal coherence and approaches to health-impacting commodity markets (tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, pharmaceuticals); the politics of lesson drawing in uncertain policy environments; vertical and hegemonic coherence (including how the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and international financial institutions shape domestic policy decisions in drug governance).

More information on Rachel Barry’s profile.

Usher Institute

Current research interests include: Smoking cessation (behavioural and pharmacological interventions), smoking in pregnancy and interventions to support cessation in pregnancy and relapse prevention post-partum,  Tobacco harm reduction and vaping (policies in the UK and internationally, trials and observational studies of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation and e-cigarette use in young people), tobacco packaging and marketing (including standardised packaging), policy implementation, the role of evidence in tobacco control policy making, service evaluation, tobacco control in low and middle income countries, smokeless tobacco.

More information on Professor Bauld’s profile

Global Health Policy Unit

Usher Institute

Current research interests: global tobacco control (currently working on a GCRF funded study to build research capacity in low and middle income countries and create an evidence base to inform tobacco control implementation); UK smoking cessation services in the UK (Fiona was part of a research study that conduced a national evaluation of UK Stop Smoking Services in England); developing a smoking cessation service for women living in Ireland (We Can Quit); adolescent smoking prevention. Fiona was part of a research team that evaluated the pilot delivery of ASSIST (A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial) in Scotland. She is also is currently undertaking a part -time PhD to explore message diffusion from the ASSIST programme.

Usher Institute

Usher Institute/Global Health Policy Unit

CPHS - Honorary member of staff

A PhD candidate funded by the UKCTAS, Usher Institute

Her PhD research involves qualitatively investigating the social and spatial patterning of smoking within one urban-deprived area of Scotland. Her research interests include: the role of environment and place in relation to young peoples’ smoking attitudes and behaviours; the social and cultural meanings ascribed to smoking; young peoples' lives as they transition from adolescence to early adulthood; and health inequalities.

More information on Martine Miller's profile

A Teaching Fellow in the Global Health Policy Unit at the University of Edinburgh and a doctoral graduate of this university.

Her research interests include: understanding the strategies of transnational tobacco companies to influence tobacco control policies, particularly their use of bilateral trade agreements and investment treaties; the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC); plain packaging; and the regulation of international labour mobility in the health sector.

More information on Dr Evgeniya Plotnikova's profile

Global Health Policy Unit

Usher Institute - Honorary member. Catriona currently works for the Scottish Government but has previously held post-doctoral posts in the CPHS (CMVM) and GPHU (CAHSS).

Her research interests include: sociology of science and technology; harm reduction and smoking (including nicotine replacement therapies and electronic cigarettes); smokers’ understandings and experiences; health inequalities and the social determinants of health.

More information on Dr Catriona Rooke's profile

A post-doctoral research fellow based in the Usher Institute at Edinburgh.

Her research interests include: public health sociology; child and family perspectives of, and negotiations around, health and illness (with much of her research to date focusing on child and family perspectives on secondhand smoke and cancer); health inequalities; stigmatised health behaviours; and qualitative methods.

Neneh is currently leading a harm reduction project which supports parents to create smokefree homes in disadvantaged areas, funded by NHSLothian and the Scottish Government.

Dr Neneh Rowa-Dewar's profile

Usher Institute

A Reader in Human Geography.

Her research interests include: spatial inequalities in health (including those relating to tobacco use); neighbourhood determinants of health (including the availability of tobacco); and environmental influences on health. She is also a founding member of CRESH.

More information on Dr Niamh Shortt's profile

CRESH website

Research Fellow at the Usher Institute.

Her research interests include: equity impact of tobacco control policies and cessation services; understanding the role of social networks in smoking cessation; exploring whether social network differences can explain socioeconomic inequalities in quit outcomes; developing and evaluating network-based stop smoking interventions.

More information on Dr Caroline Smith's profile

Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH)

Career Development Fellow, Global Health Policy Unit

UK Research Fellow, Tobacco Control Capacity Programme.

PhD student, Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH)

Her PhD research focuses on socio-spatial inequalities in smoking in mega-cities of China by using quantitative methods. Her research interests include: spatial patterns of tobacco retailing; the contribution of individual and neighbourhood-level attributes to inequalities in smoking status; tobacco retail availability, neighbourhood inequalities, and mental health status of individuals in relation to smoking and smoking cessation.