Associate Professor Peter Kelly (Chair)

Peter Kelly is an Associate Professor based at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the Deputy Head of School (Research) in the School of Psychology and is a Member of the Australian College of Clinical Psychologists. A/Professor Kelly’s research is focused on the development, implementation and evaluation of evidence-based approaches within mental health and substance dependence treatment settings. His work has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Centre (NHMRC), Australian Research Council (ARC), Cancer Institute New South Wales, Heart Foundation and Rotary Health. He has published his research widely and presented at a range of national and international academic conferences.

Professor Amanda Baker

Professor Amanda Baker is an NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has practiced as a senior clinical psychologist in the United Kingdom and Australia. Her expertise lies in the development of evidence-based treatment for substance use and mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and psychosis. Professor Baker has published extensively in peer reviewed journals and published numerous treatment manuals and clinician guidelines based on her innovative clinical interventions. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the inaugural Australian Psychological Society’s Outstanding Mentor Award in 2017. She is a Past President of the Australasian Professional Society for Alcohol and other Drugs (APSAD) and the Immediate Past President of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy (AACBT).

Dr. Ed Day BA, BM, BCh, DM, MRCPsych

Dr Ed Day is a Senior Lecturer at the National Addiction Centre and a Consultant in Addiction Psychiatry with Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust. His work is split between clinical research and teaching at King’s and clinical practice in a drug treatment team in Erdington in Birmingham. Much of his research focusses on developing and testing innovative psychosocial interventions for tackling addiction.

Ed is currently the Vice President of the Society for the Study of Addiction and has previously been the academic secretary of the Addictions Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has been a member of a number of expert working groups to develop national clinical guidance in the field including the 2007 UK Guidelines on Clinical Management of Drug Misuse and Dependence (‘the Orange Book’) and the 2012 Medications in Recovery report. He was also been part of the working group that developed the NICE Guideline on Diagnosis, Assessment and Management of Harmful Drinking and Alcohol Dependence.

He is a trustee of Action on Addiction and Changes UK, two charities providing treatment for people with problems with addiction.

dr brian hitsman

Dr. Brian Hitsman is Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He received his BS in psychology from Alma College (Michigan) and MS and PhD in clinical health psychology from the Chicago Medical School, completing his psychology internship in behavioral medicine at Brown University's Clinical Psychology Training Consortium. He completed a two-year fellowship in tobacco dependence and treatment in 2004 in the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center at Brown/The Miriam Hospital, and was on the Brown faculty until leaving for Northwestern in 2008. Dr. Hitsman’s work focuses on the causes and treatment of tobacco use and dependence among medical and psychiatric populations. He has published his findings in leading journals, including Addiction, Biological Psychiatry, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and Neuropsychopharmacology. Dr. Hitsman has served on the editorial board of Nicotine & Tobacco Research since 2009, first as an associate editor and then as deputy editor since 2012. He has been principal investigator or co-investigator NIH grants continuously since 2004, and was a member of the NIH Interventions to Prevent and Treat Addictions Study Section (2016-2020). Honors include an American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Young Investigator Memorial Travel Award (2006), a NIDA Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award (2004-2009), and Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse (2013) and Society of Behavioral Medicine (2020). Dr. Hitsman was a member of the 2005 NIMH workgroup on tobacco use and cessation in psychiatric disorders, a contributing author of the 2010 Surgeon General’s Report on How Tobacco Causes Disease: The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease (Chapter 4: Nicotine Addiction: Past and Present), and a writing committee member of the Smoking Cessation Panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which in 2014 developed the first NCCN practice guideline for smoking cessation treatment in cancer patients.

Professor jo neale

Jo Neale is Professor in Addictions Qualitative Research based within the National Addiction Centre and working across the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She is also Conjunct Professor in the Centre for Social Research in Health at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Jo originally qualified as a social worker and has held positions at the University of Glasgow, the University of York, and Oxford Brookes University, where she was Professor of Public Health. 

Jo has undertaken a range of qualitative and quantitative studies exploring topics relating to both homelessness and addiction. Her current research focuses on the development of patient reported outcome measures within the addictions; evaluations of recovery oriented interventions; opioid overdose; the experiences and needs of people who frequently attend emergency departments for alcohol-related reasons; addiction and sleep; hospital discharge schemes for people who are homeless; and community pharmacist provision of contraception services for women receiving opioid agonist therapy.

In 2013, Jo co-founded the Addiction Service User Group (SURG) with members of the Aurora Project in Lambeth, London. This group has supported many research projects and initiatives, including the development of the free SURE Recovery app.

Jo is a Senior Qualitative Editor and Commissioning Editor for the international journal Addiction; a member of the editorial board of The International Journal of Drug Policy; and a member of the editorial board of Health Sociology Review. Between 2008 and 2015, Jo was a Trustee for the Society for the Study of Addiction.

dr john kelly

Dr. Kelly is the Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School - the first endowed professor in addiction medicine at Harvard. He is also the Founder and Director of the Recovery Research Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Associate Director of the Center for Addiction Medicine (CAM) at MGH, and the Program Director of the Addiction Recovery Management Service (ARMS). Dr. Kelly is a former President of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Society of Addiction Psychology, and is a Fellow of the APA and a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has served as a consultant to U.S. federal agencies and non-federal institutions, as well as foreign governments and the United Nations. Dr. Kelly has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, chapters, and books in the field of addiction medicine, and was an author on the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. His clinical and research work has focused on addiction treatment and the recovery process, mechanisms of behavior change, and reducing stigma and discrimination among individuals suffering from addiction.

dr katie witkiewitz

Dr. Katie Witkiewitz is a Regents’ Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico, United States of America.  The underlying theme of her research is the development of empirically-based models of addiction, with an emphasis on harm reduction, recovery, and applying advanced quantitative research methods to better understand changes in alcohol and drug use behavior over time.  Dr. Witkiewitz is also a licensed clinical psychologist and has worked extensively on the development and evaluation of mindfulness-based relapse prevention for addiction.  Her research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, totaling nearly $40 million in research funding since 2004. To date, she has authored 5 books, over 230 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and she has given over 75 presentations and invited talks. She is currently Editor of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Field Editor for Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, and serves on the editorial boards of Substance Use and Misuse, Alcohol and Alcoholism, and Clinical Psychological Science.

associate professor victoria manning

Victoria Manning is an Associate Professor in Addictions at Monash University and Head of Research and Workforce Development Turning Point.  She is a trained SMART Recovery Facilitator and runs a weekly group in Melbourne Australia. She is a charter psychologist and holds a PhD on neurocognition and co-occurring disorders. She has worked as a clinical researcher for over 20 years in the UK, Asia and Australia. Her primary research interests are trialling novel interventions to improve outcomes for people with substance use disorders, including neuroscience-informed interventions, psychological and pharmacological treatments and mutual aid. In the UK, she led the first trial of assertive linkage to peer-support recovery groups following discharge from inpatient withdrawal treatment. Her research papers from Australia’s largest treatment outcome study demonstrates the benefit of attending peer-support on client outcomes. She is currently leading a government-funded project evaluating the feasibility and impact of SMART recovery within addiction treatment services in Victoria. 

Dr. A. Tom Horvath

A. Tom Horvath, PhD, is a California licensed and board certified clinical psychologist (American Board of Professional Psychology). He has specialised in addictive problems since 1985. He is the founder and president of Practical Recovery Psychology Group, a self-empowering addiction treatment centre in San Diego, past president of the American Psychological Association’s Society of Addiction Psychology (Division 50; the world’s largest organisation of addiction psychologists), past president of the San Diego Psychological Association, and author of Sex, Drugs, Gambling & Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions (recognised as a “Self-Help Book of Merit” by the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, and in Self-Help That Works, edited by Norcross, Campbell, Grohol and Santrock). He was adjunct faculty at the University of San Diego (10 years), and Alliant International University (9 years). For 20 years he was the volunteer president of SMART Recovery (established 1994), an international non-profit offering free, self-empowering, science-based mutual support groups for addressing any substance or activity problem. He is a fellow of the San Diego Psychological Association, the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, and the American Psychological Association.

Katie Lowe

Katie currently holds the position of Postdoctoral Fellow within the Centre for Criminology at the University of Hong Kong. Her research is in drug use and supply, risk (edgework), gender and harm reduction. Katie’s award winning PhD thesis focused on the hidden use of cocaine amongst privileged expatriates in Hong Kong. Her postdoctoral research builds on understandings of drug use by hidden populations of users and suppliers, during the global pandemic (COVID-19). Katie is a qualified SMART Recovery Facilitator and holds weekly addiction recovery meetings in Hong Kong.