Research topics

Supervisor(s): Matt Field, Alekhya Mandala. University of Sheffield

People who experience gambling harm may find it difficult to control their gambling behaviour. Gambling products may be designed to manipulate the psychological mechanisms that make behaviour difficult to control.  This project will employ experimental psychology methods to investigate how specific features of gambling products (e.g. continuous play) influence specific psychological processes (e.g. reward valuation, loss chasing) and will explore how treatment could be adapted to buffer some of those harmful effects.

Supervisor(s): Simon Dymond, Martyn Quigley, Alice Hoon, Jamie Torrance. Swansea University

The Habit Formation, Reward, and Behavioural Markers of Excessive Gambling (HARM) project will investigate the role of habit-related learning processes in predicting risk of gambling related harm. This translational investigation will delineate how different habits are formed, the impact of reward schedule learning on the persistence of habits, and how gambling habits are best unlearned to foster recovery.

Supervisor(s): Simon Dymond, Jamie Torrance Martyn Quigley. Swansea University

Men, gender minority and socioeconomically deprived adults are at an increased risk of gambling harm. This studentship will investigate the prevalence of gambling harm in socioeconomically deprived young people across gender identity and ethnicity and estimate intersectional effects of both economic hardship and marginalisation.

Supervisor(s): Fabiola Creed, Gerda Reith. University of Glasgow

The student will critically examine the Gambling Levy as a historic and epistemic shift in the UK’s approach to gambling harm prevention. Using a comparative historical lens, they will explore how the levy reshapes funding, evidence, and intervention, and reconfigures stakeholder roles. In doing so, they will investigate how the levy influences research agendas, institutional arrangements and the positioning of key stakeholders, including Centre and GHRIPs activities. Methods may include documentary analysis, interviews, and forum observation. This project will generate insights into governance, prevention politics, and knowledge production within the evolving levy ecosystem.

Supervisor(s): Simon Dymond, Alice Hoon. Swansea University

The student will explore the extent to which practitioners can integrate Digital Contingency Mapping for gambling across digital platforms to support prevention and treatment. GamBan (an independent gambling software blocking service) will support this project and wish to explore links between their data and Open Banking Data (offered by Project Partners, the Smart Data Foundry). The student’s research will allow individuals to visualise their behaviours and use this to develop a harm prevention tool. This project will generate insights on preventive, protective and recovery factors and the digital gambling ecosystem.

Supervisor(s): Hazel Squires, Ellen McGrane. University of Sheffield

The student will explore the relationship between the dynamics of gambling behaviour (e.g. type, speed, duration), measures of gambling harm and the effectiveness of policy responses. They will assess these relationships using statistical methods and identify which elements of gambling behaviour most influence levels of harm and should be targeted by policies. They will also explore which instruments measuring gambling-related harms are best-suited for this purpose. Finally, the student will assess the feasibility of incorporating their findings into a health economic policy analysis model, currently under development at the University of Sheffield, which currently only includes the relationship between gambling frequency and harm. This project will generate insights on operator practices, prevention and protective factors and policy responses.

Supervisor(s): Heather Wardle, Gerda Reith. University of Glasgow

Increasingly, regulators are requiring operators to implement AI driven methods to identify and prevent gambling harms. However, little examination has been given to the legal frameworks, in terms of ethical use of AI, of these perspectives and how these frameworks are implemented. Taking a cross comparative approach, this project will investigate the practices, processes and ethics of this central tenant of gambling regulation and generate recommendations for improved implementation and action.

Supervisor(s): Heather Wardle, Gerda Reith. University of Glasgow

This project will explore the ways in which gambling is embedded within families, partnership dyads and wider communities to explore social network influences of gambling behaviours. It will also critically examine the concept of affected others, exploring the variety of experiences, including people’s own gambling positionality, to better understand how practices are shared, reproduced or contested within family/partnership groupings. This will highlight pathways for potential intervention and mediation. 

Supervisor(s): Gerda Reith, Christopher Bunn. University of Glasgow

Researchers have tracked the increasingly immersive and pervasive nature of industry marketing as it has expanded into areas such as sports betting, social media platforms, sponsorship, and virtual reality. For example, gambling marketing is now ubiquitous around sports, where betting companies partner with football and other sporting organisations. It is also increasingly present on digital platforms, where gambling corporations partner with influencers to produce viral content and enhance visibility. These strategies aim not simply to promote gambling products but to weave them into the routines, identities and everyday practices of audiences.