Lucy Dorey qualified in psychiatric nursing in 1993 and worked in substance abuse detoxification units in her early career in London and Auckland. In 2000 she completed a Masters in Integrative Humanistic Counselling at Auckland University while working as an addictions counsellor. On returning to the UK in 2000 she worked in addictions services in a variety of roles.

More recently Lucy has worked in an ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) Substance Abuse Recovery project in Portsmouth and as an ACT Therapist and Mindfulness Trainer in Private Practice. In 2014 she became a full time student at the University of Southampton studying for a MPhil/PhD in Health Sciences and is researching recovery following alcohol detoxification.

Mehnaz has been working at Lifeline for twelve years and has a real passion for supporting people in alcohol addiction. Her role has developed over the years and she is now responsible for the development, coordination and implementation of community projects within Lifeline Bradford.

Mehnaz has vast experience in working with diverse communities and reaching out to those who otherwise may not access support. Her recent project has been focusing on older people and harm reduction.

Faz has worked for the Lifeline Project for 12 years and has been based in Bradford over the last 4 years. Over this time he has had a range of different roles supporting community members by providing advice, information and support for adults concerned about their alcohol & drug use.

As the Community Services & Diversity Lead Faz is involved in supporting the development of Lifeline services across Yorkshire and the North West looking at diverse communities and breaking down that stigma attached to drug and alcohol services which can have a positive impact on communities we are working with.

Faz’s research in Bradford has been around alcohol in different communities and how we are reaching out to them.

James is a senior lecturer in the Department of Law and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University. James was employed by the University of Manchester, as a research assistant on a Nuffield funded Medical-negligence project and also collected data for King's College London's ESRC, Secure Estates, young offender project.

His Doctoral thesis is entitled, How does AA's 12 Steps and membership of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous work for addressing drinking problems? Recent published work includes, researcher and co-author of the UK Life in Recovery Survey 2015, and an evaluation of Right Turn Veterans project (Addaction: Forces in Mind Trust).

James co-authored of 'A Social Capital Approach to Assisting Veterans Through Recovery and Desistance Transitions in Civilian Life' 2015. Currently James and SHU colleagues are engaged in evaluating the Intuitive Recovery programme for long-term opiate users.

David Best is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Law and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University and Associate Professor of Addiction Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. He has an under-graduate degree in psychology, a masters in criminology and a PhD in the psychology of addictions. He has authored three books on addiction recovery and has written more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and a number of book chapters and technical reports.

He has worked in academic and policy research and his primary research interests are around recovery and desistance, social networks and recovery capital. Previous employers include the Institute of Psychiatry, Strathclyde University, Birmingham University, the National Treatment Agency and the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit.

His current research activities are around desistance and recovery, the impact of the recovery movement in the UK and internationally and the relationship between drug use and offending.

Doug Cameron was a consultant psychiatrist who developed the Leicestershire Community Alcohol Services. A non-abstinence oriented community based response to drinkers in difficulty in an English county with a population of just under 1 million.

Founder member of NDSAG.

Professor Robin Davidson is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist who left the Leeds Addiction Unit to become Head of Clinical Psychology Services for the Northern Health and Social Board and then the Belfast City Hospital Trust. It was here that he developed the Psychooncology service and the McMillan Support and Information Centre. He has honorary appointments with Queens University Belfast, The University of Ulster and London South Bank University. He is contracted to the Isle of Man Health Service and has a flourishing UK private practice. He is currently Co Chair of GAIN ( the NI equivalent of NICE ) and Chair of UK Smart Recovery.

Adrian is an alcohol nurse specialist RMN with over 20 years' experience in hospital liaison roles. Before that he worked in community drugs and alcohol services for mental health services across six boroughs of London. From 1998 to 2010 he helped establish brief interventions using the Paddington Alcohol Test at St Mary's Hospital. He provided substance misuse input and training about brief advice/brief interventions (IBA) in the A&E and acute medical wards. He was invited to contribute to NICE guidelines for alcohol treatment.

Nick Heather is Emeritus Professor of Alcohol & Other Drug Studies in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health & Life Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.  He obtained a BA (Hons) in Psychology from University College London in 1965, an MSc in Clinical Psychology from Leeds University in 1971 and a PhD from the University of Dundee in 1979. After working as a clinical psychologist in the UK National Health Service, he developed and led the Addictive Behaviours Research Group at the University of Dundee. In 1987 he became founding Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

He returned to the UK at the beginning of 1994 to take up a post as Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Newcastle City Health NHS Trust and as Director of the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Studies in Newcastle.

Gillian started her career in the alcohol field as a student on placement at the Leeds Detoxification Centre in 1977 and subsequently worked there for six years as a specialist social worker latterly with responsibility for the "dry houses", opening the first dry house for women in Leeds. She moved to the Leeds Addiction Unit in 1984, set up the training department and had a research and clinical lead role in addition to my teaching role.

She gained a PhD in the psychology of addiction while working there, and remained in these three roles until July 2015 when she retired from her clinical and management roles. Gillian continued in research and training.

Bruce Alexander has explored diverse corners of the addiction field since 1970. He has counselled hard-core heroin addicts in Vancouver's darkest streets and in prisons; conducted psychopharmacological research (the "Rat Park" experiments); supervised field research on cocaine use for the World Health Organization; searched out analyses of addiction in the writings of the ancient philosophers, modern historians, and social scientists; interviewed university students about their addictive involvements, investigated the "temperance mentality" in several countries, and served on the Boards of Directors of NGOs in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Keith Humphreys is a Professor and the Section Director for Mental Health Policy in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Research Career Scientist at the VA Health Services Research Center in Palo Alto and an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London.

Sarah is a Professor of Adult Social Care at Manchester Metropolitan University, England. In addition to her academic role, Sarah is a registered social worker with a practice background in adult services, particularly working with people experiencing mental distress, homeless people, and people with alcohol and other drug problems. Her broad research and practice interests include substance use and social care education and practice, e.g. domestic violence, older people, end of life care. She has led research and policy work in the UK on substance use in social work education and practice including her recent document 'Alcohol and other drug use: the roles and capabilities of social workers' (2015).

Lorna Templeton is an Independent Research Consultant who has worked for 20 years in the area of addiction and families, conducting a wide range of national and international research in this area and publishing widely. Lorna Templeton is a Trustee of Adfam and of AFINet, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Bath.

Dave is Chief Executive of Alcohol Research UK, a national charity that funds research into alcohol harm and promotes a better understanding of alcohol research findings across society. He was appointed in 2009 and oversaw the closure of the former Alcohol Education and Research Council and its replacement by the current charity.

Most of his career has been spent in charity management or community development and previous roles have included Chief Executive of charities based in Lancashire and on Merseyside and as project manager for a regeneration scheme in Derbyshire. Before that he worked as a planning officer within the national park movement. He lives in north Wales.

Faisal Mahmood is a Senior Lecturer in Counselling at Newman University, Birmingham. He oversees a Foundation Degree in Integrative Counselling and Introductory Certificate in Counselling. He has worked nearly 20 years in the addiction field working in a range of roles including addiction counsellor, senior practitioner and manager. He has developed substance misuse assessment and action planning protocols now used by a range of organisations in the West Midlands. He has also developed a unique addiction treatment provision for a major commercial workforce in the region. He is currently undertaking a research 'Exploring Reasons of Non-attendance of Appointments within a Community Based Alcohol Service' (Dataset for quantitative study comprises of 129,000 sessions' attendance history).

Marianne is currently in her second year of an Alcohol Research UK part-funded PhD in Social Psychology titled 'Group influence on alcohol-induced risk-taking'. Marianne's research interests are around the social and contextual influences on alcohol consumption and subsequent related behaviours.