Rate My Professor Ryan Ward

In his studies on human drug use, Ward's group conducts nationwide surveys and focus groups across Aotearoa New Zealand to understand users' motivations for consuming substances, their experiences, associated harms or benefits, and knowledge of harm-reduction strategies. Current and past projects focus on MDMA, psychedelics, benzodiazepines, cannabis, and nitrous oxide. He teaches PSYC 210: Principles of Psychological Research and PSYC 330: Drugs, Behaviour, Addiction, and Policy, and has supervised more than 30 postgraduate students. Notable publications include Tashakori-Sabzevar et al. (2024) 'Basal forebrain and prelimbic cortex connectivity is related to behavioral response in an attention task' in iScience; Whelan, Noller, and Ward (2024) 'Harm reduction behaviours and harm experiences of people who use 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in Aotearoa New Zealand' in Harm Reduction Journal; Deane et al. (2023) 'Cognitive and arginine metabolic correlates of temporal dysfunction in the MIA rat model of schizophrenia risk' in Behavioral Neuroscience; and Deane and Ward (2022) 'The instrumental role of operant paradigms in translational psychiatric research: Insights from a maternal immune activation model of schizophrenia risk' in Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. His scholarship has accumulated over 2,800 citations.