Rate My Professor Olivia Maynard

Olivia Maynard is an Associate Professor in Psychological Science in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol. Holding a BSc and PhD, she is an interdisciplinary behavioural scientist working at the interface of psychology, public health, and policy. Her research investigates how environments, communications, and regulation shape health-related behaviours, with a focus on tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and harm reduction. Core research strands encompass tobacco and nicotine regulation, including evaluations of plain packaging, health warnings, and e-cigarette communications using experimental methods, eye-tracking, neuroimaging, and natural experiments; alcohol harm reduction through field trials and laboratory studies on glass design, labelling, and alcohol-free alternatives; and drug use, stigma, and harm reduction, exploring media framing, public discourse, institutional practices, and evidence-based approaches like safer supply.

Throughout her career, Maynard has served as a visiting researcher at the University of Tasmania from December 2017 to June 2018. She has received the British Association of Psychopharmacology President's Poster Prize in 2015, the ESRC Outstanding Early Career Impact Prize in 2014, and the ESRC Research Fellowship Placement Scheme Award in 2013. Her influential publications include "Visual attention to health warnings on plain tobacco packaging in adolescent smokers and non-smokers" (Addiction, 2013), "Avoidance of cigarette pack health warnings among regular cigarette smokers" (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2014), "Have e-cigarettes renormalised or displaced youth smoking?" (Tobacco Control, 2020), "Informing drinkers: Can current UK alcohol labels be improved?" (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2018), "Group VR experiences can produce ego attenuation and connectedness comparable to psychedelics" (Scientific Reports, 2022). Maynard has contributed evidence to inform population-level interventions and public health policy. She volunteers weekly at the Bristol Drugs Project, grounding her research in lived experience and frontline harm reduction practice, and is affiliated with the Bristol Population Health Science Institute, the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, and Bristol Neuroscience.