Sally Gainsbury

I am a researcher working at the intersection of psychology, gambling harms, digital behavioural risk, and technology-enabled harm. Over the course of my career, I have focused on understanding how gambling behaviour develops, how risk can be identified earlier, and how evidence-based tools can reduce harm for people who gamble. I am currently a Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, and my university profile describes my work as specialising in gambling harms, digital behavioural risk, and technology-enabled harms.

My work has never been limited to one narrow question. From early in my career, I was interested in behaviour, decision-making, and the practical systems that shape risk. That is one reason gambling research became such an important area for me. Gambling sits at the meeting point of psychology, mental health, public policy, and technology. It raises questions not only about individual behaviour, but also about design, access, prevention, and consumer protection. Over time, that combination became the foundation of my academic path.

My academic background

My training is in psychology, and my formal qualifications include a PhD, a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology, and a BPsych(Hons). That background has shaped the way I approach gambling research. I have always been interested in behaviour and harm through both a clinical and a research lens. In practice, that means I do not see gambling only as a policy issue or only as a treatment issue. I see it as a field where evidence, human behaviour, mental health, and system design all interact.

That academic background also prepared me for the major changes that gambling research has gone through in the last two decades. Earlier research often focused more heavily on venue-based gambling and visible markers of problem gambling. But as internet gambling, mobile access, digital payments, and app-based systems expanded, the research questions changed. It became increasingly important to understand how technology alters patterns of use, spending, access, and self-control. Those questions became central to my work.

My early career and Southern Cross University

An important stage of my early academic career was my work at Southern Cross University and the Centre for Gambling Education and Research. Publication records from that period show me as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and later as a Senior Lecturer. That was a formative period for me because it gave me the opportunity to develop a clear research focus at a time when online and interactive gambling were becoming much more important in Australia and internationally.

During those years, I was especially interested in how internet gambling was changing the environment for people who gamble. It was already obvious that online gambling was not simply traditional gambling moved onto a screen. The speed of access, the range of products, the continuous availability, and the ease of digital spending all created new questions. I wanted to understand whether online access changed risk, whether different modes of access mattered, and whether new behavioural markers could help explain who was most vulnerable to harm.

That period also shaped my broader view of gambling research. I became increasingly convinced that gambling harm cannot be understood only by looking at one variable at a time. It is influenced by the person, the activity, the environment, and the systems around them. That belief still informs my work now.

My move to the University of Sydney

A major turning point in my career was my move to the University of Sydney. My current university profile lists me as a Professor in the School of Psychology, and the university phonebook and gambling team pages connect me with the Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic and the Brain and Mind Centre. Those roles matter to me because they bring together research, treatment, and public impact in the same institutional setting.

At the University of Sydney, I became more deeply involved in work that combined research evidence with applied harm-minimisation strategies. The gambling research team page describes projects on gambling harms, digital behavioural risk, consumer protection tools, and public policy submissions. That reflects the direction my career has taken. I have wanted my work to be useful not just in academic journals, but also in treatment services, regulatory debate, and consumer protection practice.

My role has also grown over time. University records have listed me in leadership positions within the Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic, and the current pages place me in a senior role within the University of Sydney’s gambling research work. For me, leadership in this area means more than administrative responsibility. It means helping build a field of research that is rigorous, relevant, and capable of responding to fast-changing digital environments.

Why online gambling became central to my research

If there is one theme that people most often associate with my work, it is online gambling. I spent many years trying to understand how internet gambling differs from land-based gambling and what those differences mean for harm. In my review article Online Gambling Addiction: the Relationship Between Internet Gambling and Disordered Gambling, I examined how the increased availability of internet and mobile gambling had changed the gambling environment and why researchers needed to pay attention to accessibility, interface design, and ease of spending.

What interested me most was not simply whether online gambling was “better” or “worse.” That question was too simple. What mattered was how different forms of access interact with different activities and different users. Some people gamble across multiple platforms and products. Others stay with one activity. Some are affected more by convenience and speed. Others are more influenced by engagement and repetition. My work tried to make those distinctions visible rather than collapsing everything into one category.

That is why I also worked on research comparing internet-only, land-based-only, and mixed-mode gamblers, and on studies looking at the relationship between specific gambling activities, problem gambling, and psychological distress. I wanted the field to move toward a more precise understanding of harm, one that recognised that different pathways and different behaviours matter.

My work on consumer protection and harm minimisation

Another major part of my career has been the study of consumer protection tools and harm minimisation. I have been very interested in what actually helps reduce risk in real gambling environments. It is not enough to say that consumer protection matters. We need to know which tools people use, which tools they ignore, and under what conditions interventions make a meaningful difference.

That interest is reflected in both my publications and my research projects. One of the studies I co-authored examined how internet gambling customers use consumer protection tools such as deposit limits and self-exclusion features. Another line of work looked at limit-setting among online gamblers and whether messages can encourage people to adopt spending limits. These questions matter to me because they move the field toward measurable interventions rather than general statements of concern.

In the study on limit-setting, we found that people who set limits significantly reduced their average daily wager, net loss, and betting intensity compared with people who did not set limits. Findings like that are important because they show that relatively simple tools may support meaningful behavioural change when designed and implemented well.

My interest in broader digital risk

Over time, my research interests also expanded into broader forms of digital behavioural risk. My university profile explicitly connects my work not only to gambling harms, but also to technology-enabled harms. That reflects a wider development in my thinking. Gambling is one part of a much larger digital environment in which design, reward schedules, accessibility, and constant engagement can affect behaviour in powerful ways.

That broader view also explains my interest in social casino gaming. In research on problematic social casino game use among at-risk gamblers, I looked at forms of digital activity that are not always classified as formal gambling but may still share important behavioural and structural features with it. I have found this area especially important because the boundaries between gambling, gaming, and monetised digital entertainment are becoming less clear. Research has to keep up with that change.

My editorial and leadership roles

A different but equally important part of my career has been academic leadership. My professional profile states that I provide research leadership at institutional, national, and international levels, and that I serve as Co-Editor-in-Chief of International Gambling Studies. I have also held editorial roles connected to addictive behaviour research. These responsibilities matter to me because they allow me to contribute not only through my own work, but also by helping shape standards and directions in the broader field.

Editorial work is often less visible than publishing, but it matters a great deal. It is part of how a field defines what counts as strong evidence, which emerging questions deserve attention, and how interdisciplinary conversations move forward. In gambling studies, where psychology, psychiatry, public health, regulation, and digital media all overlap, that kind of work is especially important.

My involvement in policy and public debate

One of the things I have valued most in my career is the chance to contribute to policy discussions using research evidence. The University of Sydney gambling team page includes a range of submissions to government inquiries and reform processes on topics such as online gambling, credit-card use, self-exclusion, and cashless gambling. This kind of work matters because gambling policy has real consequences for people’s wellbeing, and academic research should be part of those conversations.

I have been especially interested in the question of how consumer protection measures operate in practice. It is one thing to propose a safeguard in theory. It is another to test how it works in a real environment, whether people use it, and what effects it has. That is why I value research that can move between data, treatment settings, and public policy rather than staying in one space alone.

How I see my contribution

If I had to describe my contribution in simple terms, I would say that I have tried to help gambling research adapt to the digital era. Earlier models of gambling harm remain important, but they are no longer enough on their own. We need frameworks that take seriously the effects of online access, app design, payment systems, multiple accounts, behavioural data, and consumer protection tools. Much of my work has been about building that broader and more modern evidence base.

I also see my work as part of a larger effort to move gambling studies away from simplistic assumptions. Gambling harm is not produced by one cause. It emerges through an interaction between people, products, systems, and environments. That is why I have tried to combine psychological research with practical tools and policy relevance. I believe the strongest work in this field is work that is empirically rigorous, clinically aware, and useful beyond academia.

Selected Milestones in My Career

Selected Works and Research Areas

Looking back at my career, I see a path shaped by one central question: how can we better understand and reduce gambling-related harm in changing technological environments? That question has taken me across clinical psychology, academic research, consumer protection, digital risk, and policy engagement. I have tried to build work that is useful not only for researchers, but also for clinicians, regulators, and the broader public.

In that sense, my biography is also a reflection of how gambling studies itself has changed. The field is no longer concerned only with visible problem gambling in traditional settings. It now has to engage with online systems, digital interfaces, behavioural data, and technology-enabled forms of risk. Much of my work has been devoted to helping that transition happen in a rigorous and practical way.