Dr Will Lawn began working as a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at King's in June 2022. Will was awarded his PhD from UCL in 2016, supervised by Professor Val Curran and Professor Celia Morgan. The thesis was entitled "Drug and Non-Drug Reward Processing in Cigarette and Cannabis Users". Will completed his undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge in 2012 in Natural Sciences with a specialism in Experimental Psychology.

Previously, Will worked in the Department of Addictions as a Research Fellow from 2021 to 2022, working on a project with Professor Sir John Strang and Dr Basak Tas about opioid overdose and wearable devices that may be able to detect overdose. Prior to that, Will was a post-doctoral research associate at the Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit at UCL between 2016 and 2021 on two different projects. From 2017 to 2021, he coordinated the ‘CannTeen’ project which investigated the acute and chronic effects of cannabis in adolescents. From 2016 to 2017, Will coordinated a clinical trial which examined ketamine as a treatment for alcohol dependence (KARE).

Currently, Will is researching the following:

1. Acute and long-term psychological and neural impacts of cannabis
2. Devices that can detect opioid overdose
3. Treatments for adolescent cannabis use disorder

Will aim's to enhance our understanding of substance use disorder through comprehensive, interdisciplinary work, and improve the lives of people with problem drug use.

Research interests

• Cannabis
• Opioid overdose
• Addiction
• Ketamine as a treatment of addiction
• Adolescent drug use
• Reward processing
• Using fMRI to understand addiction

Teaching

Will runs the 3rd year 'Addictions' Psychology BSc module and teach on the 2nd year 'Choices' Psychology BSc module, and also teaches on the Addictions MSc course. 

Expertise and public engagement

Will has delivered numerous assemblies to schools across London about the impact of cannabis on adolescent development and his research into cannabis has been featured in national newspapers.