HERMES team

Nadine Blanchette-Martin, MSW

Clinical co-director of the HERMES team
Service de recherche en dépendance du CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale and CISSS de Chaudière-Appalaches

Nadine Blanchette-Martin is a planning, programming and research officer. She works as a researcher with the Addiction Research Service of Santé Québec, Capitale-Nationale Universitaire and Chaudière-Appalaches. Her areas of specialization related to gambling, Internet use, and psychoactive substance use focus on improving practices, developing and validating assessment tools, supporting family members and loved ones of people experiencing addiction, and intervention with Indigenous communities.

Sylvia Kairouz, PhD

Scientific co-director of the HERMES team
Full professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University

Sylvia Kairouz has published extensively in sociology, social epidemiology and public health journals and won the Brain Star Award from the Canadian Institute of Health Research for her innovative work on the role of social contexts in alcohol consumption. She is currently engaged in funded research examining comprehensive multilevel models of determinants of gambling behaviours. She has piloted six large population surveys in Quebec and collaborates with scholars and key institutions in Quebec, Canada and internationally.

Research interests: gambling; addictive behaviours; social inequalities; gambling technologies in the cyberspace.

Magali Dufour, PhD

Full professor, Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal

Magali Dufour works in collaboration with the Research Chair on Gambling and is also involved as a researcher with the HERMES team, the Institut Universitaire sur les Dépendances and the Centre de recherche Charles-Lemoyne. Her research focuses on addiction, particularly problematic Internet use (especially among adolescents). She is also interested in the evaluation, treatment and consequences of gambling addiction.

Research interests: Internet use in adolescence; gambling; poker use in adolescence; effects of childhood trauma; adolescent cyberaddiction; comorbidity between gambling and addiction.

Martin French, PhD

Associate professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University

Martin French’s research examines the social dimensions of technology with an empirical focus on communications and information technology (CIT). It emphasizes the broader social and political contexts of CIT, focusing especially on risk, surveillance, privacy, and social justice. He recently embarked on a study of efforts to regulate ‘dangerous’, ‘risky’, and ‘contentious’ forms of digitally-mediated consumption. A key set of questions underlying this study concerns what might be termed the ‘gamblification’ of games, the incorporation of addictive, gambling-like retention mechanics into digital games. 

Research interests: risk; surveillance; social justice.

Annie-Claude Savard, PhD

Full professor, École de travail social et de criminologie

Annie-Claude Savard holds a research grant on responsible gambling entitled: Jeu responsable et transition à la vie adulte : de l’expérience subjective à la prévention (FRQ-SC : 2017-2021). Using a sociological perspective, her research studies the underlining rationales of gambling habits adoption among youth and young adults in regard to the social context in which they develop, on the social representations of responsible gambling concepts held by young adults and by the actors within formal institutions, and on the development of individually and socially responsible gambling initiatives. She is also a researcher at the Institut universitaire sur les dépendances, a collaborator for the RISQ group (Recherche et intervention sur les substances psychoactives – Québec), and for the Centre jeunesse de Québec – Institut universitaire.

Research interests: sociology of gambling; youth and young adults; individually and socially responsible gaming; stigmatization of individuals with addictions; social justice.

Andrée-Anne Légaré, PhD

Associate professor, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke

With a PhD in Psychology, Andrée-Anne Légaré is an associate professor at the Addiction Service of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Université de Sherbrooke. She has extensive experience providing individual and group interventions to clients experiencing addiction and mental health issues.

Her research focuses on behavioral addictions, particularly problematic screen use and gambling disorder among young adults. She also studies the psychosocial impacts of digital technology use among young adults, while contributing to the development of a digital well-being approach.

Research interests: behavioural addictions; problematic screen use; gambling; best practices in intervention.

Adèle Morvannou, PhD

Associate professor, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke

Adèle Morvannou has been collaborating with the Research Chair on Gambling and HERMES since 2013, contributing to research, publications, and knowledge mobilization initiatives on gambling-related issues. Her research examines gambling-related harms, help-seeking processes, stigma, and service accessibility, with a particular focus on women's experiences. In parallel, she develops and evaluates innovative educational approaches aimed at strengthening relational and clinical competencies among addiction professionals.

Research interests: gambling; poker players; gender studies - gambling among women; behavioural addictions; concept of passion; mixed methods.

Eva Monson, PhD

Associate professor, Faculty of Medicine and Health sciences, Université de Sherbrooke

Eva Monson has worked in collaboration with the Research Chair on Gambling since 2013 on multiple publications ranging in topic from the effects of Quebec tobacco legislation to the associations found between adverse life events and gambling behaviour. She is also an active member of the HERMES team. Her current research is devoted to investigating how social and environmental deprivation, from the level of the individual to the neighbourhoods where they reside, factor into the dialogue concerning responsible gambling practices.

Research interests: mental health; traumatic stress; gambling; epidemiology and contextual factors.

Francine Ferland, PhD

Researcher at CIUSSS de la Capitale-Nationale
Associate professor, School of Psychology, Université Laval

Francine Ferland has been a researcher at the Addiction Research Department of Santé Québec – Capitale-Nationale-Universitaire et Chaudière-Appalaches for nearly 15 years and is an associate professor at Université Laval’s School of Psychology. She is also a regular researcher at the Institut universitaire sur les dépendances of Santé Québec – Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal-Universitaire, HERMES – Habitudes de vie et recherche multidisciplinaires : virtualité et jeu, and the Centre de recherche de Santé Québec – Chaudière-Appalaches.

Research interests: addiction assessment; addiction intervention; improving addiction-related practices; diverse populations and addiction-related issues.

Guylaine Sarrazin

Social worker and clinical activities specialist

With nearly 30 years' experience in the field of addiction rehabilitation, Guylaine Sarrazin works mainly with youth and their families. She is a social worker by profession and currently works in the role of clinical activities specialist in the CRD's professional addiction support service team at Santé-Québec de la Montérégie-Ouest, where she acts as professional addiction respondent for the Montérégie region.

Her duties focus on three main areas: training for second-line addiction workers as well as for workers in other sectors; clinical support for workers, either directly (e.g., practice standards, case discussion, orientation support) or indirectly (e.g., clinical process committees, development of clinical tools); and consulting support for managers in the development and updating of service trajectories and for various organizational issues.

On the research front, Guylaine participated in the VIRTUADO research project and is currently collaborating on the VIRTUA research project, which aims to develop a “manualized” treatment model for young adults aged 15 to 25 with problematic Internet use disorder (PIU), mainly related to video games and social media.

Research interests: youth and family clientele; PUI clients; family and friends; concurrent disorders; preferred approaches: systemic, motivational interviewing, solution-oriented brief therapy, TCC; partnership and service trajectories.

Nancy Rocha

Director of Addiction Services, Centre de référence du Grand Montréal (CRGM)

With more than 20 years of experience in the field of addictions, Nancy Rocha has developed recognized expertise in problem gambling, substance use, and support for families and loved ones. At the Centre de référence du Grand Montréal (CRGM), she led the TeleCounseling service before being appointed Director of Addiction Services in 2022. In this role, she oversees services such as Drug: Help and Referral, Gambling: Help and Referral, and TeleCounseling. She also leads the development of Remote Overdose Prevention Support (ADPS), an innovative service designed for people who use substances alone. Holding a Bachelor of Science with certificates in addiction studies, criminology, and youth intervention, she applies her expertise to developing accessible and safe support services.

Research interests: addictions; problem gambling; substance use; intervention and family support; overdose prevention.

Valérie Van Mourik, MSc

Clinical researcher
Social worker, CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Centre de réadaptation en dépendance de Montréal

Valérie Van Mourik worked as a counsellor in the field of gambling and Internet addiction from 2006 to 2021. She is currently working on the development of a treatment program for cyberaddiction as well as training and knowledge transfer related to gambling and Internet addiction. She has been collaborating as a clinical researcher with the Research Chair on Gambling since 2010 and with the HERMES team since 2012.

Research interests: cyberaddiction; intervention; addiction; gambling.

Julie Sauvageau

Criminologist
Master’s degree in Addiction Intervention
Professional coordinator of the Youth Program, Addiction Rehabilitation Centre (CRD), CISSS de Laval

Julie Sauvageau has been a practitioner at the CRD since 2017. She primarily works with adolescents and young adults experiencing addiction, as well as with their families. Julie advocates for a systemic approach, along with cognitive-behavioral interventions. She also works as a teaching assistant in addiction intervention programs at the Université de Sherbrooke. In addition, Julie is a psychotherapy intern, following a cognitive-behavioral model, in an outpatient psychiatry clinic.

Research interests: co-occurring disorders; adolescents and young adults; problematic screen use; service organization and trajectories.

Eva Doroshev

Eva Doroshev holds a BA in Communication from Concordia University and has been working with the Research Chair on Gambling since 2024. She supports the Chair’s communications through website management, digital content, social media, newsletters, event promotion and visual design.

Research interests: science communication; digital media and culture; health communication; public engagement with research; media representations of social issues.

Annabelle Lemire-Harvey

Annabelle Lemire-Harvey holds a bachelor’s degree in Criminology from Université Laval and is currently completing a master’s degree in Criminology at the same institution. She has been working with the HERMES team since 2026.

Katerine Lehmann, MSc

Katerine Lehmann is a PhD candidate in health sciences research, specializing in addiction services, at Université de Sherbrooke. She is supervised by Professors Eva Monson and Andrée-Anne Légaré. Katerine graduated from Concordia University with a BA in Psychology. She then pursued a master's degree in health sciences research, exploring gambling practices before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a longitudinal qualitative method. Her current doctoral research examines the relationship between loneliness and online gambling among young adults. Katerine has worked for several years as a research professional in both academic and marketing environments. She is currently the student representative on the HERMES research team.

Research interests: mental health; behavioral addictions; contextual factors; intersectionality ; qualitative research; gambling.