Conversation With...

This weekend I will...

Go and see ‘Stop Making Sense’, the remastered edition of the Talking Heads documentary at a fancy cinema in Melbourne, and then all day Sunday I’m playing in a social netball tournament with my mixed netball team. I’ve been playing social netball for 20 years. I started because one of our housemates said ‘we’re going to play a season of netball, do you want to come and join us?’ I hadn’t played before but I suddenly realised being 6 foot 4 and slow that netball is the sport for me.

I'll never forget...

One of the tours around the Kettil Bruun Society (KBS) symposium in Norway was a hike on this clifftop over the fjords, with The Pulpit Rock jutting out over the Lysefjord, it was just the most incredible afternoon. That’s something that is always going to stick with me – it was just storybook scenery, it felt unreal.

I'd originally planned to work...

We moved to Melbourne from Brisbane about 15 years ago and I had no plans. I had been working in the public service as a statistician and I was kind of ready for a change but had no idea what to change to. My partner got a post-doc position at Melbourne University and I was prepared to work in a bookshop or volunteer somewhere. I had no idea what I would do and then somebody I knew in Brisbane knew Paul Dietze at Turning Point back in the day and mentioned this new research centre that was starting, so I stumbled into a job there and have been an alcohol researcher since 2006. It’s all been unplanned.

I'm most scared of... 

Probably embarrassing myself, doing something foolish in front of an audience. I have already woken up in the small hours thinking about the KBS symposium in Fremantle in May.

The qualities I most value in my colleagues are...

I think a kind of generosity, or straightforwardness. The people I work best with are people who are not pretentious, not egotistical, who are down to earth and generous with their intellect – and funny, it helps if they’re funny. Academia is strange. You spend your professional life trying to sell yourself and telling everyone how wonderful you are and the people I work the best with are the ones who don’t really believe that, even though they have to say it.

I'm really terrible at...

Singing. I’m always singing songs around the house and my partner is constantly furious at me about it. I try to keep it internal but it always bursts out. It’ll be on show at KBS 2024, singing Waltzing Matilda with the rest of the Australian delegates; at the conference dinner, every country sings some sort of national song and we always do Waltzing Matilda, even though it’s not the best tune.

If I had more time, I'd...

Do so much. I want to do more running. I want to go birdwatching all over the country and the world. I want to read a million books; I’m an insatiable reader of fiction novels. I’ve got spreadsheets, I make graphs every year of my reading, so I combine my love of statistics and a love of books.

For my next holiday...

I’ve just got my driver’s licence, which is very grown up of me at 44, and we’re excited to go on a road trip. At the end of summer, subject to the bushfire season, we’re planning to drive around the beaches on the south coast of NSW that I’ve heard so many wonderful things about.

My goal for 2024 is...

Making sure the KBS conference in Fremantle is successful is one of my top priorities for the year. Then I’ve got grant-related goals, which are pretty boring I guess, but I need to put in a bunch of big funding applications and keep the wheels turning.

Career wise, I’m most proud of...

The people and networks. Obviously I’m proud of some of the research I’ve done – I’ve done studies that I think are useful and interesting – but I think looking back I’m proudest of the networks I’ve built around me, both of mentors but also colleagues at my level and students and early career staff that I’ve looked after. It’s quite a lovely group of people that I’ve been part of building and that gives me real satisfaction.

The sector's biggest challenge going forward is...

Funding is always lacking, and I think one of the reasons for that is our constant struggle to build public and political enthusiasm for the sector, for reducing harm from alcohol and other drugs. Trying to maintain relevance and build a profile is hard because it’s such a messy, complicated sector. Everyone has opinions from their own experience of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) and the challenge is to build a coherent public appetite for reform around AOD issues to reduce harm. Politicians won’t act unless the public cares and that’s the challenge, getting it to become an issue that’s on the radar for people.

My big hope for the drug and alcohol sector is…

Better resourcing, obviously, but one thing I’ve been thinking about as a long term goal for the field is a clearer approach to reducing harm that embeds AOD problems in the broader social dynamic that they are part of. There are things we can’t fix in the AOD sector because they stem from poverty or stigma or trauma, and the big hope is figuring out what systems look like that reduce harm that cut across the wide range of social problems. That we can embed AOD treatment, practice and policy in broader policy and broader practice to reduce harm for people who are falling through the cracks.

Find out more about Dr Michael Livingston’s research, and click here for more information about the 2024 KBS international conference focussed on alcohol epidemiology and policy, being held in Fremantle in May 2024.