Fiona Hutton is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University, New Zealand. She has taught and researched in the areas of Criminology, specifically criminological theory, youth crime and cultures, drug policy, harm reduction, alcohol and other drugs, for the past twenty years. She has published extensively in New Zealand and international journals on her research, most recently in Critical Public Health (2016), The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (2017), The Journal of Drug Issues (2016), Feminism and Psychology (2016). She is the author of ‘Risky Pleasures? Club Cultures and Feminine Identities’ (Ashgate, 2006). Current research projects include: exploring the ways drug use and drug users are demonised and stigmatised through a variety of media and other discourses; critically exploring the concept of intoxication, and how the intoxication practices of diverse groups are experienced and responded to (through an edited collection with Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2019).

Research project undertaken at the ANU

I am planning to use my time at ANU to develop the arguments related to my book, an edited collection focusing on intoxication. This edited collection aims to consider the global discourses and debates about ‘intoxication’, and to engage in critical academic discussion around this notion. The book seeks to unsettle the dominant discourses about intoxication and to consider this concept in new, critical ways. To this end, prominent scholars in the field have been invited to contribute chapters on diverse topics from alcohol to energy drinks, and their relationships to the concept of ‘intoxication’.

Dr Keane whose school is hosting me is contributing a chapter to this volume, and we will almost certainly discuss her contribution and related debates. I will also be working on editing the first drafts of the chapters for this book.

My presentation for the Sociology seminar series will focus on the contested notion/s of harm reduction, pleasure and intoxication, an area that I am currently working on developing. The feedback from my seminar will be very useful in taking this work forward, and I hope to develop collaborations or relationships based on mutual areas of interest.

Seminars and public lectures

3 December 2018: Dr Hutton will be delivering a guest seminar on harm reduction, pleasure and intoxication as part of the Sociology Seminar Series.