Nicola Lindson

Behaviour Change Researcher

As a young child I witnessed my mother quitting smoking and was intrigued by the fact that this was no easy task. If a person wants to give up smoking why can’t they just stop? Obviously as I grew older I learnt about the concept of addiction but I was still curious about the mechanisms behind this, and more importantly I wanted to be able to help people to overcome their nicotine addiction and stop smoking. I decided to study Psychology at University because I enjoyed the subject, but it became clear during my studies that I could combine this with my interest in tobacco addiction. Following a Masters degree in Research Methods, I went on to study for my PhD at the University of Birmingham looking specifically at novel ways to help people quit smoking. I was awarded my PhD in 2012 and in 2013 moved to the University of Oxford, where I have been a researcher studying the best ways to stop smoking ever since. Currently a lot of my work focuses on medications and vapes for quitting smoking and in the last year I have also started looking specifically at new approaches that could be used to help people living in social housing and/or in financial difficulty to quit smoking. I hope that this work will help to provide evidence-based treatment where it is needed most and reduce some of the health inequalities caused by tobacco smoking.