Polly Radcliffe joined King’s in 2014. She has over twenty years of experience of qualitative research in health and social care that has focused on gender and identity in the context of the criminal justice system, substance use treatment and health care services. She has extensive experience of accessing and engaging hard to reach research participants and analysing qualitative data using thematic, discourse and narrative analysis. Prior to coming to the National Addiction Centre she has worked on research projects at the Institute for Criminal Policy Research and the University of Kent. Polly has a PhD in Sociology form Goldsmiths. 

Polly is currently lead-researcher at King’s for the ESRC funded Relations Study, funded by the ESRC, Governing parental opioid use: a relational ethnography investigating from a family perspective how policies and practices for working with families affected by drug use impact on children and families. The study will use ethnographic methods to examine how drug use is managed in practice. Researchers will interview, observe and spend time with parents and families as well as health and social care service providers to understand more about how the system works.  

Polly was Co-App for the NIHR Advance Programme and  managed the qualitative research in the UK for the ESRC funded Men, Substance Use and Relationships study for which she recruited men in substance use treatment for survey questionnaires and conducted qualitative interviews with men who identified as perpetrators of IPV in order to explore their rationales and understandings of perpetrating violence. She conducted a policy mapping exercise and interviewed policy and practice stake holders. She coordinated the national Learning Alliance, wrote a project blog and is lead and co-author of papers and the Framework for working safely and effectively with male perpetrators of IPV in the context of substance use treatment.  

Research Interests

• Substance use, gender and identity  
• Intimate partner abuse perpetration and substance use  
• Drug policy and families 
• Qualitative methods   

Teaching

• Qualitative methods
• Substance use policy