Gareth Roderique-Davies is Professor of Psychology at the University of South Wales with expertise in substance misuse, behavioural addiction, and public health approaches to reducing addiction-related harm. He is an HCPC-registered Psychologist, a Chartered Psychologist, and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

Gareth has worked on numerous funded and commissioned research projects in partnership with NHS, third sector, and government partners. He is an executive board member of the National Centre for Suicide Prevention and Self-Harm Research and was previously an invited observer on the Cross-Party Group on Problem Gambling at the Welsh Government and an expert member of the Welsh Government's Substance Misuse Treatment Framework for Alcohol-Related Brain Damage (ARBD) Project Board. He leads the Applied Psychology Research and Innovation Group's Addictions Research Group and is REF Lead for UoA4 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience)

Visit the Applied Psychology Research and Innovation Group here

Visit the ARBD Training Website here 

Current Research Activity:

Current Addictions Research Group projects are organised within three main research programmes, reflecting the progression, development, and potential impact of the work for the medium and longer term.

Alcohol-Related Brain Damage (ARBD): Examining the prevalence, diagnosis, and treatment of ARBD, including the management of alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Recent work has evaluated oral ethanol prescribing in NHS acute care settings, explored service provision across Wales, and investigated cognitive impairment among alcohol treatment service users. This programme also includes training and awareness-raising for frontline practitioners.

Substance use and harm reduction: This programme encompasses investigating the links between substance use and risk of suicide and self-harm and evaluations of novel treatment services, including extended-release buprenorphine (Buvidal) and ketamine treatment.

Gambling-related harm and behavioural addiction: Developing and validating tools for early identification of gambling risk and building a public health model for reducing gambling-related harm in Wales. This programme also examines extreme sport participation and sport as a pathway for recovery from substance misuse.

Doctoral Students – Awarded

Dr Harriet Cassley: Alcohol-Related Brain Damage: A Delphi Consensus Study and the Development and Pretesting of a Novel Screening Tool (DOS with Prof Bev John and Dr Richard May). Awarded 2026

Dr Odette Hornby: "From Fear to Flow": Understanding the Motivations for Participating in Extreme Sports (with Prof David Shearer and Dr Rob Heirene). Awarded 2025.

Dr Nyle Davies: The Social Impact of Gambling Harm: Screening and Intervention (with Prof Bev John and Dr Klara Price). Awarded 2024.

Dr Marie O’Hanrahan: Factors predicting relapse from substance-related care and support services (DOS with Prof Bev John and Prof David Shearer). Awarded 2023.

Dr Jamie Torrance: Development of harm reduction interventions for bespoke risk environments in the changing landscape of gambling and gaming (with Prof Bev John and Dr James Greville). Awarded 2023.

Dr Tom Young: Identifying the Behavioral and Psychophysiological Indicators of Mentally Tough Athletes (with Prof Richard Mullen and Prof David Shearer). Awarded 2022.

Dr Victoria Markham: Evaluating Barriers to Skill Acquisition for Children with Language Delays Receiving Behaviour Analytic Instruction: An Experimental Analysis (with Dr Richard May and Prof Jenn Austin). Awarded 2021.

Dr David Tee: Client characteristics that influence business performance coaching efficacy: the development of a theoretical framework and predictive psychometric instrument (with Prof David Shearer). Awarded 2020.

Dr Rob Heirene: Improving the Understanding of the Prevalence, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Alcohol-Related Brain Damage: a Multi-Study Investigation. (DOS with Prof Bev John and Dr Ioannis Angelakis). Awarded 2019

Dr Stuart Jones: The Emotional Responses following Injury in Recreational Athletes: The Development of the Emotional Response to Rugby Union Injury Scale (DOS with Prof Bev John). Awarded 2014

Dr Sonja Garrett: Psychological resilience and its correlates in people with chronic pain living in the UK. (DPsych, City University). Awarded 2014

Dr Mirella Longo: Managing minor ailments: A Discrete Choice Experiment to investigate pharmacy users’ preferences (with Prof David Cohen). Awarded 2012

Doctoral Students – Current

Laura Drummond: Developing an App-based Self-help Intervention to Reduce Alcohol Consumption (DOS with Prof Bev John and Prof Neil Frude)

Iwan Rowlands: Psychological interventions for physical recovery from acute exercise-induced fatigue (with Prof David Shearer and Dr James Greville)

Elin Thorkildsen: The Frontal Lobe Paradox in the assessment of alcohol-related cognitive deficits and brain damage (DOS with Prof Bev John and Prof Julia Lewis)

Claire Cotter: Multi-factorial problems require multi-faceted responses: illustrating multi-discipline approaches through the complementary fields of health promotion, systems thinking, and implementation science, in the context of suicide prevention (with Dr Bethan Mitchell and Prof Mark Llewellyn)

Aleksandra Dummer (Cardiff University): Exploring the impact of the Buvidal Psychological Support Service (BPSS) in Opioid Use Disorder (with Dr Sofia Gameiro and Dr Lucie James)