This thesis explores patterns of time use among university students to further understand their leisure time as an aspect of their day-to day lives, especially with regard to their time spent drinking alcohol. Attending university can be viewed as a key aspect in the prolongation of the youth life-stage for some young people, and a key influence on how they develop their own identities and spend their leisure time. In this regard, research suggests that far from being a homogeneous group, there can be a marked difference between sub-groups of students. Residence, for example, has been shown to be a particularly significant factor influencing how students report their university experience. Furthermore, a number of studies report that rather than being fixed, young people’s leisure lives, including their time spent drinking, tend to be dynamic, context-dependent and develop in some significant ways during their university careers. However, studies that have focused on university students have tended to study aspects of their leisure in isolation. This study aimed to address this limitation by studying students’ lives ‘in the round’ in order to more adequately understand the contextual complexity of their lives and how this might shape patterns of time use on leisure in general and drinking alcohol in particular.