Network: Social Research Network on Alcohol and Drugs
Funding source: FAS - Swedish Research Council for Working Life and Social Research
Period: 7/1/04 - 6/30/07
Funding: 816000 SEK
Description:
The aim of the network has been to create a national base and meeting place for young and more experienced alcohol and drug researchers within the social sciences. The networking has strived to stimulate cooperation between different regions and different research milieus in Sweden as well as ongoing research within the area. The main target of the network meetings has been researchers and doctoral students within Sweden. During the first four years six network meetings have been arranged. The meetings have lasted for two days with between 40 and 60 participants attending each meeting. The working procedures have been varied with seminars, research presentations in plenum and work shops. SoRAD was hosting the first two meetings which took place in Stockholm, January 27th - 28th 2005 and September 15th - 16th 2005. Those two meetings had a broad approach with presentations of recent research results from a wide range of topics. At the third meeting in Malmö March 16th - 17th 2006 social scientist from Lund and Malmö were hosts. This meeting had a thematic emphasis and the red thread was ‘Addiction, ideology and qualitative research’. The program contained research presentations, discussions in small groups, information films for drug users, and visits to for example a syringe exchange program. The forth network meeting was held in Örebro in February 22nd - 23rd 2007 with the thematic heading ‘Compulsory treatment and treatment’. The fifth meeting was co-organized with the Public Health Institute in Östersund April 10th -11th 2008 on the theme ‘Alcohol policy changes - Swedish alcohol policy in a European context.’ The sixth meeting: ‘Inclusion - exclusion, theoretical perspectives, methodological aspects and the citizens’ experiences’’ was held in Stockholm May 7th - 8th 2009. The meeting discussed definitions and theories connected to the concepts of inclusion and exclusion and their implication for alcohol and drug research. Other important issues were how we can explain and study the processes leading to inclusion and exclusion both from a national and local perspective as well as from the perspective of the individual how is subjected to exclusion. Apart from the meetings the participants in the network have been able to keep in contact by other means. Continuous information of the activities in the network has been available on SoRAD’s homepage. The participants have also been able to communicate through the network’s mailbox. This mailbox works so that all e-mails, which are sent to the mailbox’s address automatically reaches all other members of the network. Thus everyone can be updating each other of seminars, conferences, literature, projects, research proposals, and available appointments or other matters that might be of interest to the participants in the network.
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