Our Staff
Professor Heather Wardle
Professor Heather Wardle is Professor of Gambling Research and Policy at the University of Glasgow. An internationally recognized scholar, she specialises in the intersection of gambling, public health, and policy. For nearly two decades, she has played key roles in designing and analysing major UK health and gambling surveillance studies-including the Health Survey for England and the British Gambling Prevalence Survey-and now leads the transformative Gambling Survey for Great Britain, one of the largest, most comprehensive datasets on gambling behaviour in the UK.
Her expertise bridges research, policy, and public engagement. She co-lead the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling and previously served as Deputy Chair of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling, offering independent advice on gambling policy to regulators and government. Beyond the academy, Professor Wardle contributes to global discourse-advising bodies such as WHO, providing evidence at Parliamentary committees, and appearing in national media to spotlight gambling harms and regulatory reform.
Professor Gerda Reith
Professor Gerda Reith is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow, where she leads pioneering, independent research into gambling, addiction, consumption, risk, and social inequality. Her award-winning monograph The Age of Chance: Gambling in Western Culture (1999; Philip Abrams Memorial Prize, 2000) reframed gambling as a cultural practice rooted in social structures. She conducted landmark longitudinal qualitative studies of “gambling careers,” tracing how gambling behaviours evolve over time in diverse life contexts-shedding new light on trajectories of harm and resilience. This was followed by Addictive Consumption, which explores how modern consumer culture fosters patterns of dependency, framing addiction as a defining feature of late capitalist societies.
Her broader empirical contributions reveal how gambling-related harm is disproportionately concentrated among socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, informed by spatial, gendered, and intergenerational patterns. Reith has shaped research-policy discourse through grant-funded projects and roles on expert panels-including work with the Gambling Commission, the WHO expert group on gambling and the Howard League’s Commission on Crime and Gambling Related Harms. She is currently a member of the DCMS College of Experts.
Professor Christopher Bunn
Professor Christopher Bunn is an applied sociologist. His work on gambling addresses the intersection of gambling and sports as well as the global expansion of the industry to the global south through work Malawi, Ghana and Tanzania. His work blends sociological theory, qualitative fieldwork, public-health inquiry and creative methods to inform evidence-based policy responses to gambling harm across the globe.
His recent contributions include a co-edited book Gambling and Sports in a Digital Age, a comparative policy analysis mapping regulatory ecosystems across Sub-Saharan Africa, and a series of pioneering papers on the spread and impacts of commercial gambling in Malawi. This work has been covered by Bloomberg, the Guardian and Le Monde, and led to a British Academy funded study using creative methods to co-produce research with young people in Malawi and Ghana, which subsequently fed into an ESRC IAA funded programme to prevent gambling harms. He has also authored a critical agenda-setting piece on young people’s gambling in SSA, urging interdisciplinary research beyond epidemiological frames, emphasising the need for cultural and historical scholarship.
Dr Daria Ukhova
Dr Daria Ukhova joined GRG in 2021 to lead the policy workstream of the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling, bringing over a decade of global expertise in gender-responsive health and social policy-from roles at Oxfam, WHO, and the European Institute for Gender Equality-to her academic leadership.
Her recent research critically interrogates international legislative and regulatory trends in gambling, revealing how most jurisdictions focus on individual responsibility rather than industry practices and structural harms. Her global review in The Lancet Public Health offers policymakers insight into systemic reform.
She also co-authored a 2025 article in Critical Gambling Studies that explores gambling harms among women through a gender-transformative and intersectional lens, underscoring the need for equity-informed approaches in gambling policy.
Dr Blair Biggar
Dr Blair Biggar: Since completing his PhD in 2022, Dr Biggar has contributed substantially to interdisciplinary initiatives at Gambling Research Glasgow (GRG). His work includes coordinating the Football Fans and Betting (FFAB) intervention, co-leading the lived experience stream of the Lancet Public Health Commission on Gambling, and developing Words Matter, a guideline for respectful and non-stigmatizing language in gambling reporting. He also contributes to local-level policy with GRG’s Gambling Harm Needs Assessment for Blackburn and Darwen Local Authority.
Beyond academia, he contributes to public discussions, for example on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours, where he discussed how sponsorship in esports targets younger gambling demographics, and on BBC Radio Scotland’s Morning Show, where he spoke about sports betting, the subject of his chapter in Gambling and Sports in a Digital Age.
Ms Sarah Tipping
Sarah Tipping is a Research Associate contributing to the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Addictions. She is instrumental in analysing the prevalence, nature, and wider associations of gambling harmsthrough sophisticated use of survey data and advanced statistical modelling, looking at the impacts on individuals, their families, and wider contacts. Her research critically examines the “prevention paradox,” exploring how those at low or moderate risk contribute significantly to overall gambling harm-drawing attention to broad-based public-health vulnerabilities. Her research is combined with an ongoing PhD that focuses on the associations between gambling behaviours and wellbeing.
Sarah co-authored key publications including the Gambling Survey for Great Britain annual report (2023) and a comparative analysis of gambling products, involvement, and related problems using both the GSGB and Health Survey for England datasets. Her background includes over 20 years of experience in policy-oriented quantitative research in public policy and practice.
Dr Fabiola Creed
Dr Fabiola Creed is a health historian in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. She contributes to the Wellcome-funded project “Kicking the Habit: Historicising ‘Addictive’ Sport Sponsorship in Britain, 1965-2025,” where her research strand explores the gambling industry’s sponsorship of sports, including football, rugby, cricket, and golf. The project historicises how “addictive” marketing has been embedded within British sport.