Joanna: I am very excited to be talking with you today: thanks so much for your time. I came across your work when reading an academic paper that you published in 1990 on the criminalization of pregnant women who drink alcohol or take proscribed drugs, so it resonated with my current research on female cultures of drinking (my ‘working title’ is Wine: History, Memoir, and the Muse). I then learned that you graduated from Cornell University and the New York University School o

On Wednesday, 25th March 2026, Elizabeth (‘Betsy’) Ettore and I sat down on Teams to discuss her research. JB: Lovely seeing you, Betsy. Let’s start. You were born in Connecticut and educated at Fordham University in New York and then at the LSE in London, where you did your PhD. After posts in London (including the Institute of Psychiatry and my college Birkbeck, University of London in the 1980s), Finland, and Plymouth, you settled at the University of Liverpool where y

On 26 January 2026, I spoke to Robert (‘Bob’) C. Fuller over Teams. It was an exhilarating experience. He is a charismatic figure, with a broad smile, wearing a black tee-shirt and jacket and sitting in front of a bright, geometric painting. As part of my research on wine and female cultures of drinking, I read his wonderful book, Religion and Wine: A Cultural History of Wine Drinking in the United States, so I was not surprised that he exudes enthusiasm for human foibles,

On 28 January 2026, I sat down with Professor Robin Room over a Teams call to discuss his influential research on alcohol, which began in the early 1960s and continues today. He was speaking to me from his crowded, book-lined study in Melbourne. Despite decades in the U.S., his strong Australian accent, intellectual generosity, and warmth made talking with him a pleasure. His enthusiasm for the all-too-human propensity to enjoy alcohol, illegal drugs, and gambling was palpabl

Merle Thornton speaking about the protest in 1965. I am sad to hear of the death of Merle Thornton, Queensland feminist activist and academic, who died last year, aged 93. I never met her, but she appears in a book I am currently writing on wine and women. She achieved so many things in her life, but she came to my attention as one of the ‘bar suffragettes’. In March 1965, Thornton (a philosophy postgraduate at the University of Queensland) and Rosalie ‘Ro’ Bognor (who was