Our History
1. Foundations in Cultural Critique
It began with Professor Gerda Reith’s award-winning monograph, The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (1999/2002), a critical exploration of gambling as a cultural phenomenon. The book won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize in 2000 and has subsequently been translated (in whole or in part) into Korean, Spanish, Hungarian and French. The book established sociological understanding of gambling internationally.
2. Longitudinal insight: “Gambling careers”
Reith’s subsequent longitudinal qualitative study of “gambling careers” traced how people move in and out of problematic gambling over time (five-year cohort of frequent and recreational gamblers), showing fluid, life-course patterns rather than fixed “addict/not-addict” categories. This work influenced later harm-reduction and policy agendas.
3. Social Harm & Inequalities Lens
From this theoretical grounding, Glasgow’s researchers shifted toward social harm and inequalities, demonstrating how gambling becomes embedded in social structures, particularly among vulnerable communities. This paved the way for intervention-focused and policy-engaged work supported by ESRC and health research funders.
4. Political Economies of Gambling
We have developed a critical political-economic perspective on gambling, framing it as a defining form of consumption within late modern capitalism. Drawing on Castells’ concept of techno-economic systems, Professor Gerda Reith and colleagues analyse how the intersections of technology, capital, and the state have expanded gambling markets while concentrating harms among vulnerable groups. This work challenges individualised, bio-psychological understandings of “problem gambling,” revealing how such framings obscure the structural and regulatory forces that sustain commercial gambling. In doing so, it links the global gambling economy to broader patterns of financialisation and inequality, positioning gambling as both a symptom and driver of neoliberal excess.
5. Launching Gambling Research Glasgow (GRG)
To centralise and amplify this emergent activity across sociology, public health, history, statistics, and policy, the Gambling Research Glasgow collective was formed, building on pre-existing research networks and groups. GRG’s interdisciplinary cohesion enabled research into the social and cultural contexts of commercial gambling, especially its expansion and impacts on vulnerable groups.
6. Applied Interventions in the UK
GRG translated theory into action via interventions such as PRoGRAM-A, addressing youth gambling harms, and the Football Fans and Betting (FFAB) pilot-a randomized trial using football club community coaches to reduce gambling among male fans.
7. National Measurement Leadership
Parallelly, Professor Heather Wardle took on leadership of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB)-the most comprehensive UK national gambling behaviour survey in over a decade-delivering robust, representative data for policy and service design.
8. Commercial expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa
Before the recent global framing, Professor Chris Bunn and collaborators documented the rapid expansion of commercial gambling across Sub-Saharan Africa. The research documents the digital boom in urban regions, the alignment of gambling with sport and popular culture, and the profound risks of unregulated markets lacking policy frameworks and support services. A key feature of the work has been an innovative engagement with arts-based methods to enable participatory research.
9. Global Public Health Framing
In 2024, Glasgow researchers led The Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling, delivering a landmark global mandate to treat gambling as a public-health issue and catalyse regulatory reforms worldwide.
Today, GRG continues its trajectory-fully independent of industry influence and drawing from SHAPE and STEM disciplines-to produce rigorous, culturally informed, and policy-relevant research. From cultural critique to local interventions, national surveillance, global public-health leadership, and critical global expansion analysis, Glasgow remains at the forefront of research-to-policy action on gambling harms.