Martine Skumlien is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London. 

Dr Skumlien joined King’s College London in 2024 as a research associate in the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Addictions. In 2026, she moved to the SGDP Centre as a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, where she is mentored by Professor Marta Di Forti. 

Her current work focuses on cannabis harm reduction, the impact of cannabis use on the brain, and evaluating and shaping drug and addiction policy.

Previously, Dr Skumlien worked with Professor Tom Freeman, Dr Jenny Scott, and Professor Chris Pudney at the University of Bath on mixed methods research exploring the need for drug checking and detection of novel psychoactive substances.

She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge where she investigated the association between acute and chronic cannabis exposure and reward processing in adults and adolescents. Her PhD was supervised by Professor Barbara Sahakian and Dr Will Lawn.

Her research combines quantitative methods such as fMRI, psychological/cognitive tasks, and experimental approaches with qualitative methods to gain a comprehensive understanding of factors associated with drug use and harm, and how drug-related harms can be reduced.

Research interests

• Cannabis
• Adolescent cannabis use
• Synthetic cannabinoids
• Opioids
• Naloxone
• Harm reduction
• Drug policy
• Drug checking
• Reward processing
• Neuropsychopharmacology