Background

This website is the home of Clubbing Research based in the Department of Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. It is run by Dr Karenza Moore and Dr Fiona Measham.

Research aims

Clubbing Research is now expanding following internal and external funding successes. The broad aims of Clubbing Research are as follows:

To undertake explorations of the prevalence of legal and illegal drug use (including polydrug use) through surveys.
To examine the contexts, meanings, motivations and consequences of legal and illegal drug use through a range of quantitative and qualitative methods
To analyse legal and illegal drug policy in the UK and beyond.
To explore issues surrounding contemporary night-time economies (NTE).
To understand the pleasures and problems in the use of legal and illegal drugs.
To explore processes of the criminalisation of intoxication and the impact it has on people across various domestic and public leisure spaces.
To research the use of information communication technologies (ICTS) in terms of their use by various social groups (predominately young adults, specifically EDM clubbers) and also their potential in social research.
To contribute to debates regarding the significance of EDM club scene participation in its local, global and virtual contexts.
To explore the use of mixed methods in criminology, alcohol and drugs research, and EDM club cultures research.
To provide the research base to input into the development of harm reduction models relevant to the contexts of legal and illegal drug use.

What we have achieved so far

To date, together we have explored the role of 'insider knowledge' in the development of Club Studies (Measham and Moore 2006). We have also written about ketamine use amongst British young people (see Moore and Measham 2008). We are particularly interested in 'official' responses to rave and EDM club cultures and related drug use, looking for example at the 'criminalisation of intoxication' being played out in the British NTE (see Measham and Moore 2008). We have written about 'impermissible pleasures' in UK leisure spaces (Moore and Measham 2011). We continue to develop and, refine and innovate our earlier data collection methods including surveys 'in-situ' in leisure locations such as bars and clubs building on Fiona's earlier club survey design (Measham et al 2001, Measham and Moore 2009). We have also written about the emergence of MDMA powder and crystal as a 'premium product' in the face of falling purity of ecstasy tablets (Measham et al 2009) and about issues of displacement and demand in relation to substituted cathinones (such as mephedrone) (Measham et al 2010). We received funding from the British Academy for a two year project looking at GHB and GBL use, and concentrated our efforts on the use of these and other drugs amongst gay male clubbers (see Measham et al forthcoming).

Fiona has single and co-authored on a wide variety of drug and alcohol-related issues with many distinguished academics. (a) She continues her long-term research collaboration with colleagues Judith Aldridge and Lisa Williams at the University of Manchester working on the North West England Longitudinal Study resulting in a monograph updating the drugs careers of our cohort tracked from 14 to 28 (Aldridge et al, 2011) and continued input into the theoretical debate on the normalisation of drug use (Measham and Shiner, 2009). (b) Fiona provides criminological input into research with psychopharmacologists at Liverpool University and Liverpool John Moores, analysing legal and illegal drugs, their contents and wider policy implications (Atkinson et al, 2011; Brandt et al, 2010a; Brandt et al, 2010b; Brandt et al, 2011; Sumnall et al, 2010). (c) Fiona continues her collaborative research on licensed leisure, alcohol policy and the night time economy with Phil Hadfield: Fiona was Senior Research Consultant on a Home Office-funded study evaluating social responsibility standards in the alcohol industry which included a team of 28 researchers conducting observations in 600 licensed and off-license premises (Home Office, 2008). Fiona and Phil conducted a qualitative study exploring alcohol legislation enforcement, interviewing key professionals in the field (Hadfield and Measham, 2010a) and published a body of work on the English night time economy (Hadfield and Measham, 2009a, 2009b; Hadfield and Measham, 2010b; Measham and Hadfield, 2009).

Karenza has an enduring interest in information communication technologies such as mobile devices, particularly in terms of how they are used and experienced by 'committed clubbers' (Moore 2004; 2006). Most recently Karenza has been developing the concept of 'Digital Affect' to try to capture the relationship between clubbers' identity formation, their emotional commitment to clubbing, and their use of digital media technologies (Moore 2010, 2011).

We have an excellent and expanding team of colleagues with us at Lancaster University including Dr Jeanette Østergaard, a Visiting Research Fellow from Copenhagen University who is working on a range of projects with us from October 2010 for three years. Jeanette is the Researcher on our Lancashire Drug and Alcohol Action Team (LDAAT) funded project on emergent drug trends and also has secured a prestigious Danish postdoctoral research award to explore cross cultural differences in young people's alcohol and drug use in the UK and Denmark, building on Fiona and Jeanette's continuing interest in comparative drinking patterns and cultures across Europe (Measham and Østergaard, 2009, 2011). For more information on Jeanette Østergaard please visit The Danish National Centre for Social Research and Jeanette Østergaard's Lancaster University web page.

From November 2010 Fiona and Karenza are also working together on an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded project called 'Social Media, Social Good: Ultra-Large Scale Public Engagement Systems to Challenge Anti-Social Behaviour'. This website, aimed at academics, clubbers, journalists - in fact anyone interesting in legal and illegal drugs - offers further details of all these activities, including a list of our publications. If you have any comments on our research activities, please contact Karenza.