British academic Peter Collins is an author, lecturer, and consultant on gambling and the gaming industry. A graduate of the Universities of Oxford and London, he founded and directed the National Centre for the Study of Gambling at the University of Cape Town in South Africa between 1995 and 1999. In 2000, he relocated to England, where he served as director of the Centre for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Salford, Manchester. In 2002, he was appointed Professor of Public Policy in the university's Salford Business School.