Monica Barratt

Monica is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the Social and Global Studies Centre at RMIT University. Her research investigates psychoactive drug use in digital society, with topics of interest including digital drug trading, digitally enabled communities, legislative responses to new or novel substances, translation of police data into public health alerts, drug checking and festival harm reduction, drug checking in the community, and microdosing with psychedelics.

Monica has published over 70 academic research papers and attracted over $4M competitive funding in her almost 20-year career. She is the Australian lead for the Global Drug Survey and serves as an Editor for leading journals in the drugs field: International Journal of Drug Policy and Drug and Alcohol Review.

Monica also volunteers at Bluelight.org, a global drug harm reduction community recently celebrating 20 years, and for The Loop Australia, a not-for-profit organisation started in 2018 with the goal of conducting drug checking interventions both at festivals and in the community.

Labs

Digital Inclusion, Mobility, and Activism

The research program examines the challenges and potentials of digital participation as this relates to access and inclusion, connectivity, networks and political activism, gig or micro work, and mobility and migration.

Publications

News

DERC’s research on COVID continues to surge ahead

July 21, 2020

We may have been in lockdown, but that didn’t stop DERC researchers from launching several projects to study the pandemic.