By Dr Carol Emslie from Glasgow Caledonian University took part in Scottish Crucible 2014. Carol is a Senior Lecturer within the Institute for Applied Health Research / School of Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University and leads the Substance Use & Misuse research group. Her research focus on gender and alcohol use across the lifecourse.
Currently, she holds two research grants with the National Institute for Health Research; one project is a multi-centre RCT which explores whether texting innovative messages to men in deprived areas will reduce their binge drinking, while the other is a qualitative study across four cities in the UK exploring barriers and facilitators to immunisation within Gypsy / Traveller Communities. A new study funded by Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems explores the social context of drinking in the LGBT community.
Her current research focuses on gender and alcohol use. Recent MRC funded research on drinking in midlife highlighted how excessive drinking remains normalised even in this age group, and how men regard drinking pints of beer in the pub together as ‘an act of friendship’, leading to both potentially health-damaging (excessive drinking) and health-promoting (social support) behaviours’. Other research involves a scoping review of pupulation level interventions which influence alcohol-related harm among women (working with the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the Institute for Social Marketing, University of Stirling) and exploring drinking in LGBT communities (funded by Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems).
Carol graduated from Glasgow University (First Class Honours, Sociology) and gained her PhD from the MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit in 1997. Her quantitative thesis examined the health of men and women within a British Bank in order to explore whether gender differences in minor morbidity persist amongst men and women working in similar jobs. She then worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of General Practice, Glasgow University on a qualitative project which investigated people’s perceptions of a family history of heart disease, before returning to a Senior Investigative Scientist post in the Gender & Health programme at the MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit. Her work here included examining men’s gendered experiences of coronary heart disease, analysing gender differences and similarities in narratives about cancer and depression in healthtalkonline.org (an award winning website about people’s experiences of illnesses) and examining changes in men’s and women’s drinking over time in the west of Scotland Twenty-07 Study.
Carol has served on the British Sociological Association Medical Sociology Committee, the SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems) expert group on women & alcohol, and the management group for the Men’s Health Forum Scotland. Her work has been selected for virtual special issues of Social Science & Medicine and Sociology of Health & Illness designed to showcase key papers in gender and health.
For more information on Carol and her research interests, see her webpage at GCU.