Dr Monica Barratt is a Vice-Chancellor Senior Research Fellow in the Social and Global Studies Centre at RMIT University. She is currently undertaking a four-year program of research investigating psychoactive drug use in digital society, with topics of interest including digital drug trading, digitally enabled communities, legislative responses to new or novel substances, translation of police data into public health alerts, drug checking and festival harm reduction, drug checking in the community, and microdosing. Monica has published over 70 academic research papers and attracted over $4M competitive funding in her almost 20-year career.

She is the Australian lead for the Global Drug Survey and serves as an Editor for leading journals in the drugs field: International Journal of Drug Policy and Drug and Alcohol Review. Monica also volunteers at Bluelight.org, a global drug harm reduction community recently celebrating 20 years, and for The Loop Australia, a not-for-profit organisation started in 2018 with the goal of conducting drug checking interventions both at festivals and in the community. Monica has attended and contributed to EGA since the mid 2000s, and she continues to advocate for recognition of the benefits and pleasures of psychoactive substance use in context with known risks, many of which arise from prohibition regimes themselves.