Niamh Fitzgerald

Niamh Fitzgerald (@niamhcreate) is a Professor of Alcohol Policy and Director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Health at University of Stirling (Twitter: @ismh_uos).  Niamh is Deputy Director of the SPECTRUM (Shaping public health policies to reduce inequalities and harm) research consortium (2019-2024), with responsibility for impact, knowledge exchange and public engagement. Funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership, SPECTRUM aims to conduct research to prevent and address harm to health from unhealthy commodities by using systems science to identify and evaluate solutions.

Niamh specialises in mixed methods alcohol policy research and has broad interests within that field.  Current areas of focus include retail premises licensing, drink driving limits, minimum unit pricing, framing in alcohol policy debates, conflicts of interest, and alcohol screening in pregnancy.  Niamh is recognised internationally for her work on alcohol brief interventions, having advised WHO-Europe, Public Health Scotland and several European governments.

Niamh originally trained as a pharmacist at Trinity College, Dublin.  She received her PhD in 2003 from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, for a qualitative study of policy, planning and practice in school-based drug education. From 2018 to 2021, Niamh served as President of the International Confederation of ATOD (Alcohol, tobacco and other drug) Research Associations (@ICARA_Global).