Research Interests
Open to PhD applications in the fields of alcohol and other drug use including methodological advances in the field.
Public outreach & key achievements
Dr. Shorter has been a researcher for 19+ years, supervising 14 Doctoral students to completion and into successful careers inside and outside the academy. Her achievements include a pivotal evaluation of the UK’s first unsanctioned overdose prevention site, which demonstrated its community benefits.
She also developed international consensus core outcome sets for brief alcohol interventions, drug consumption rooms, and substance use treatment fostering more effective public health and treatment evaluations.
Beyond academia, she engages with diverse audiences through media outreach, including podcasts, invited talks, the BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, and Sky News, to increase public understanding of alcohol and other drug harm reduction​ and discuss her research. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including collaborations with over 33 countries in the past 5 years alone.
She is President Elect of the International Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol (President from 2025-2027), and presented her work by invitation at conferences, globally recognised centres of excellence in the field e.g. University of Toronto, Stockholm University, University of New South Wales, Tampere University, and at the United Nations.
Her work underscores the individual, societal, and economic benefits of innovative harm-reduction approaches, aiming to transform public health and community practice.
Research students
| PhD area | Understanding individual and health factors which contribute to uptake in Ireland |
| Name | Caoimhe Shields |
| Years of study | 2023 - present |
| PhD area | Exploring the relationship between harm reduction provision and the lived experience of people who use drugs: A comparative rapid ethnographic study between the UK, Canada and Greece |
| Name | Benjamin Scher |
| Years of study | 2022 - present |
| PhD area | Treatment options for long-term alcohol dependence |
| Name | John McQuaide |
| Years of study | 2019 - present |
Alumni: Where are they now
| PhD area | The psychosocial impact of online problem gambling |
| Name | Dr Abby Hunter |
| Current position | Regional Tobacco Manager at Public Health England |
| PhD area | Hooked on the Internet: The Prevalence, Risk, Theory and Presenting Problem of Internet Addiction |
| Name | Dr Daria Kuss |
| Current position | Associate Professor in Psychology, Nottingham Trent University |
| PhD area | The Challenges of Replicating Drug Consumption Room Policy in Australia and Canada: A Comparative Exploration of Policy Transfer |
| Name | Dr Vanessa Gstrein |
| Current position | Assistant Director Skills Canberra |
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