Stay Safe @ Uni: Exploring students’ views about safety and sexual consent

In this post, Dr Emma L Davies, Lecturer in Psychology at Oxford Brookes University, shares details of an exciting new project to inform prevention activities addressing sexual violence in University settings. The project takes place in collabration with Dr Sarah Jayne Camp, Psychology Demonstrator at Oxford Brookes University, and Anna-Sherlock Smith MSc, Independent Researcher. Emma explains why this work is so important and is also able to present initial findings from this new research.

How the project started

In 2013, I attended a talk by Laura Bates, founder of Everyday Sexism, where she discussed the problem of sexual assault on university campuses. Colleagues and I felt that we wanted to do something to explore these issues further. However, at the time, I was writing up my PhD thesis and searching for employment and so it was put on the back burner for a while. Last September, a chance encounter with the Head of Campus Security led to a conversation about what approach we should take to tackle issues around sexual harassment and safety on nights out. Continue reading

Informing prevention through big data – The Global Drug Survey

This month’s blog post comes from Larissa Maier, who is voluntarily involved in the Global Drug Survey (GDS) besides her actual job, believing that this engagement can make a difference. In this blog post, she describes how she joined the GDS and shares the very first results from the GDS2017. She concludes with her view on how these results relate to global drug prevention. 

Most early career researchers start their careers by focusing on one main research question to become an expert in that specific area of research. In my case, my PhD studies addressed the prevalence and patterns of substance use for cognitive enhancement. However, after having developed a questionnaire on recreational drug use in Swiss nightlife settings as part of my master thesis, I remained connected to the Swiss projects aimed at early detection of harmful substance use. Having been a regular clubber myself back then, I could link my personal observations in the field to the data derived from the questionnaires. My knowledge about local and national drug use habits of recreational drug users increased sharply. A logical next step was joining the Global Drug Survey (GDS) to understand the superior picture and to put my findings into context. In this blog post, I will tell you more about how I became a member of the GDS Core Research Team and how our findings contribute to the prevention of harmful substance use among youth and adults across the world. Continue reading