Aysel Sultan is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Haifa, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences. Her project at the Minerva Center for Intersectionality in Aging looks into drug use in older adults framed within Science and Technology Studies and material gerontology.

Her main research focuses on youth drug use, addiction, recovery, and treatment policies. She works within the frames of STS, 'new' materialism, and posthuman theory. Present research topics also include care practices and healthcare policies for people who use drugs, as well as related marginalization. She is currently leading a project titled "Caring for people who use drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic: Empirical findings from Azerbaijan". Dr. Sultan is also the co-editor of the peer-reviewed, international journal "Drugs and Alcohol Today". 

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Publications 

Andresen, S., König, J., & Sultan, A. (2020) Editorial to the Second Issue of Childhood Vulnerability Journal, Childhood Vulnerability. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41255-020-00012-x

Sultan, A. & Hupli, A. (2020), Beyond Prescription Drugs: International Perspective on Extra-medical use [Editorial], Drugs and Alcohol Today. 20(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1108/DAT-03-2020-075

Sultan, A. & Werse, B. (2019), "Motivations for prescription drug use in a marginalized open drug scene", Drugs and Alcohol Today. 20 (1), 17-26  https://doi.org/10.1108/DAT-08-2019-0036

Sultan, A. & Andresen, S. (2019). ‘A child on drugs’: Conceptualising childhood experiences of agency and vulnerability. Global Studies of Childhood, 9(3), 224–234. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610619860996 

Sultan, A. & Mažeikienė, N. (2019). Living with HIV in post-Soviet states: Rejecting individual stigma through social activism. International Social Work. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872819858746 

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Other publications, magazine articles, and interviews 

Sultan, A. (2020) A review of global drug policy: Is legalization the future? Baku Research Institute. Available at: https://bakuresearchinstitute.org/a-review-of-global-drug-policy-is-legalization-the-future/

Sultan, A. (2018) Overlooked youth: How does national drug discourse influence recovery in Azerbaijan? Baku Research Institute. Available at: https://bakuresearchinstitute.org/overlooked-youth-how-does-national-drug-discourse-influence-recovery-in-azerbaijan

28.02.2018: "Gənc narkotik istifadəçilərinin cəmiyyətdən təcrid olunmalarının fəsadları haqqında" [Isolation of youth who use drugs in Azerbaijani society] at MAG TV Azerbaijan, online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv_4maSlsdg&feature=youtu.be&t=838

13.02.2018: "Gənc narkotik istifadəçilərinin müalicə imkanları haqqında" [On treatment opportunities for young drug users in Azerbaijan] at BBC Azerbaijan, online: https://www.facebook.com/BBCAzeri/videos/10156063379872629/

Sultan, A. (2017) “Narkotik maddələrdən asılı şəxslərə sosial yardımın modelləri” [Brief Analysis of Substance Use Social Service Models]. Elmi Əsərlər, 1(28), 111-117.

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Conference Presentations

• 2019 "Unfolding social and material practices of drug treatment for youth in Azerbaijan and Germany", Lisbon Addictions (the third European Conference on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies), October 23-25, Lisbon, Portugal (Paper)

• 2019 "Rethinking recovery: Unfolding social and material practices", 5th Contemporary Drug Problems (CDP) Conference, September 4-6, Prato, Italy (Paper)
  
  
• 2019 "Azerbaijan's national drug policy reflected in recovery of youth who use drugs", 7th Conference of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI), August 27-29, Tartu, Estonia (Paper)
  
  
• 2019 “The stake of a ‘non-standard’ comparative approach: Drug treatment policies of Azerbaijan and Germany", 13^th annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP), May 22-24, Paris, France (Paper)

• 2018 “Recovery and vulnerability in alcohol and other drug use treatment of adolescents”, 1^st Childhood Vulnerability Conference, December 12-14, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (Paper; co-organizer)

• 2018 “Recovery as an assemblage: Empirical findings from Azerbaijan”, the 12^th annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP), May 16-18, Vancouver, Canada (Paper)

• 2017 "Cultural Indicators of high-risk drug use among adolescents: Cases of Azerbaijan and Germany", November 14, Vechta University, Germany (Guest lecture)
  
  
• 2017 “Overlooked” Azerbaijani youth: How does local drug policy affect prescription drug use patterns, Drug Science Conference, September 7-9, Berlin, Germany (Poster)
  
  
• 2017 „Narratives of high-risk drug use by adolescents: Cross-cultural perspectives, 4th Contemporary Drug Problems Conference (CDP), August 23-25, 2017, Helsinki, Finland (Paper)

• 2017 “Marginalized adolescent high-risk drug users in Azerbaijan and Germany” International Federation for Social Workers (IFSW) European Conference, May 28-30, Reykjavík, Iceland (Poster)

• 2017 “Drug policies in Azerbaijan and Germany reflected in the narratives of high-risk drug-user adolescents”, 11th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (ISSDP), May 17-19, Århus, Denmark (Paper)

• 2016 ‘Person-in-context’: Using narratives to study adolescent drug use in Azerbaijan and Germany, 27th Conference of The European Society for Social Drug Research (ESSD) September 22-24, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (Paper)

• 2016 “Coping strategies of drug-using adolescents: Cross-cultural perspective”, 24th Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD), July 10-14, Vilnius, Lithuania (Poster)

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Membership

• International Federation of Social Workers (since 2015) 

• European Society for Social Drug Research (since 2016)

• The International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (since 2017)
  
  
• MIND European Foundation for Psychedelic Science (since 2017)
  
  
• EASST/4S European association for the study of science and technology (since 2020)