Benzo Research Project

As a Founding Trustee and Co-Project Lead of the Benzo Research Project, I have:

• Led recruitment campaigns and interviewed new volunteers for our Research, Policy, Outreach, and Media teams.

• Attended regular meetings with multidisciplinary teams to devise long-term research and outreach strategies.

• Designed and delivered training for our volunteers (see below).

• Fostered professional relationships with key stakeholders in the drug education, support, and policy field.

• Carried out administrative work including writing our governing document (constitution) in line with UK Charity Law.

As the Head of Research, I:

• Supervise an international team of 12 volunteer Research Assistants from an interdisciplinary range of expertise. Regular supervision is conducted through:

  • Holding regular team meetings to assist my team's progress, develop their skills, and solve problems as a collective.

  • Engaging ad-hoc 1–1 conversations, assisting in a range of issues from qualitative interpretation to technical challenges.

• Engage key partner organisations and collaborators to ground our work in real-world expertise, maximise the impact of our research, and develop new research initiatives.

As Head of Research (previously Co-Head of Research), I have led an international team in two research projects: a qualitative analysis of testimonies, and a mixed methods analysis of FOI data from local councils in England and Wales. This involved:

• Delivering training on bias in research, and qualitative and mixed methods approaches to our Research team.

• Conducting an inductive thematic analysis of 73 anonymous testimonies from young people with lived experience of non-medical benzodiazepine use across the UK.

• Co-authoring a research report which has been republished by international stakeholders:  Bright, J., Martin, A. et al. (2022). The Benzo Research Project: An evaluation of recreational benzodiazepine use amongst UK young people (18-25). Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7813470 

• Leading a mixed methods analysis of Freedom of Information (FOI) responses from 91 local councils, collected by our (now adjourned) FOI team.

In my role at BRP, I have presented our findings to a broad range of stakeholders including drug support staff, healthcare professionals, academics, policymakers, and the general public. I have demonstrated excellent oral communication skills, having been invited as a guest speaker to several high-profile events including:

• The Benzo Research Project's Report Launch & Drug Policy Debate – 5th December 2022, King's College London

• Drug Science's Street Drugs Discussions: Deep Dive into Benzodiazepines – 10th March 2023*

*NB: This was Drug Science's most highly-attended webinar in their Street Drugs Discussions series, enabling us to present our work to ~350 attendees including psychopharmacologists and NGO leaders.

• University Mental Health Charter's Online Insight Sharing Event: Mental Health & Drug Use – 14th November 2023

• London Harm Reduction Reading Group's Engaging Young People Who Use Drugs in Harm Reduction – 30th November 2023, Release

• The Benzo Research Project's Local and national approaches to young people's drug use – 12th June 2024, Imperial College London

• Cranstoun Social Justice Conference (Camurus ECR poster presentation) – 18–20th September 2024, Birmingham

I have authored several articles, and co-authored a research report and intervention statement delivered at the United Nations:

• Bright, J., Martin, A. et al. (2022). The Benzo Research Project: An evaluation of recreational benzodiazepine use amongst UK young people (18-25). Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7813470 

• Martin, A. (2022). Benzodiazepines and Post-War America. Volteface. volteface.me/benzodiazepines-post-war-america/ 

• Martin, A. (2023). Benzos are like a box of chocolates: How tough drug laws lead to counterfeit drugs. Volteface. volteface.me/how-tough-drug-laws-lead-to-counterfeit-drugs/ 

• Richards, M. & Martin, A. (2023). United Nations CND Thematic Discussions Intervention Statement 2023. Benzo Research Project. benzoresearchteam.weebly.com/blog/un-cnd-intervention-statement

To move towards our aims as a charity, I have maintained partnerships with several key stakeholder organisations. As a representative of BRP, I have:

• Fostered professional relationships with stakeholders including Drugs and Me – a drug education and harm reduction organisation who hosted our story-sharing testimony collection platform.

• Collaborated with the national drug support service NHS Inclusion to design and develop a comprehensive benzodiazepine-specific treatment pathway.

• Worked with charities such as Cranstoun and Crew to incorporate our research findings into their support staff training programmes and Crew's Annual Drug Trends Report 2021-22, which was presented to the Scottish First Minister.

• Invited to the House of Commons MP drop-in session supporting The News Movement's #BringBackDrugTesting campaign regarding the recent policy U-turn on back-of-house drug testing at UK festivals.

I have designed and delivered internal training sessions to up-skill our volunteers, including:

• Research Team: Data protection

• Research Team: Researcher Bias

• Research Team: Content Analysis

• Social Media Team: Design Guide

Using the graphic design skills I developed during my time at SSDP Imperial, I have designed social media posts such as Counterfeit Benzos: What is actually in street benzos?, internal and external presentation slides, and website elements.

In addition to my leadership role, I act as BRP's webmaster with the responsibility of managing our website. This has included:

• Regularly updating content to highlight our teams' progress to stakeholders and the public.

• A major redesign to align more closely with our brand image.

• Implementation of dynamic features including collapsible elements, button animations, and bento-style menus highlighting our incredible volunteers.

• Coding a dark mode feature to improve accessibility, using HTML/CSS and Javascript JQuery. This can either be toggled or syncs with your system preference.

• Search engine optimisation (SEO) to drive traffic to our website.

• Integrated a cookies manager to bring our site in line with data protection laws and our Privacy Policy.

NB: This website was built with Google Sites, which is free but means I can't edit the code – I promise BRP's website is much better!