Dr Zoë Fortune is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Heriot Watt University in Dubai, a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society (CPsychol) and a qualified psychotherpist. She currently teaches on both the Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses at Heriot Watt University Dubai and supervises PhD students. Her research focuses on workplace mental health and wellbeing, graduate and student mental health, and workplace transitions. She is also researching female empowerment, development in the workplace and issues relating to women’s health.

Dr Fortune is passionate about mental health, and healthcare communication; specifically, ensuring equality and access to care and support, increasing awareness and understanding, and ensuring that research findings are able to be practically implemented. As such, Dr Fortune has a background in applied psychological research and practice and her roles have focused on developing links between academic, charity, business, and governments. She holds a PhD in Health Services Research from the Insitute of Psychiatry at King's College London.

Most recently, she led the set up and development of up not-for-profit organization the City Mental Health Alliance in Hong Kong (CMHA HK), an organisation focused on workplace wellbeing (www.cmhahk.org). This organisation now works with a number of leading multi-national businesses across Hong Kong and globally, with work streams that include research, training, assessments, practical implementation and collaboration to ensure that workplaces are institutions where employees are able to thrive.

Prior to this, she worked in a number of charitable and international development institutions, leading multi-national research and complex evaluation projects across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East on Healthcare Communication and Human Rights. Previous research roles also span research in Autism, Prospective Memory, the Co-morbid relationship between physical and mental health, and personality disorders and she has spent time working with and supporting adults and children with a range of different developmental needs. 

As part of her commitment to applied research and practice, she maintains several roles across a number of community and research organisations. These include: Advisory Panel member to the CMHA HK; Mental Health and Communication Cluster Lead in the Research and Impact Initiative for Communication in Healthcare (RIICH) at the University of Hong Kong which is part of the International Consortium for Communication in Healthcare; and co-host for a developing network of organisations interested in workplace mental health in the Middle East.

In addition, she holds a position as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, and is Co-Principal Investigator on funded research to examine mental health and graduate transitions to the workplace. She is a member of the Society of Business Psychologists Middle East (SoBPME) and their nominated research lead, recently co-developing a series of research seminars entitled ‘Science to Practice’ to foster collaboration between the academic and business community.

Zoe is also the leader of a new research lab at Heriot Watt University focusing on organisational research and wellbeing in the Middle East. She is a guest editor for a forthcoming special issue in Gender in Management focused on Women in Management in the MENA context - paper submisions are welcome. 

Dr Fortune is interested in all areas relating to health and wellbeing. Currently, her research focuses on workplace mental health and wellbeing, graduate and student mental health, and workplace transitions. She is also researching female empowerment, development in the workplace and issues relating to women’s health. She is also interested in work relating to Human Rights. 

Centre for Applied Behavioural Sciences at Heriot Watt University - Centre for Applied Behavioural Sciences – Psychological research that benefits people and society (hw.ac.uk

HKU Research and Impact Initiative for Communication in Healthcare (RIICH) -RIICH | HKU (hkuriich.org)