Dr Zoë Fortune is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Heriot Watt University in Dubai and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. She currently teaches on both the Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses at Heriot Watt University Dubai. 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.

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 more globally, and work spans 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.

As part of her commitment to applied research and practice, in addition to her role at Heriot Watt University, 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, is Co-Principal Investigator on research examining mental health and graduate transitions to the workplace and a guest editor for a forthcoming BMC Psychology Special Issue on Mental Health, Discourse and Stigma. 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.

Zoë is a qualified psychotherapist with a Masters in Counselling from Monash University in Australia. She has previously worked as a psychotherapist in Hong Kong and online, and has also held positions working with both adults and children with a range of physical and learning disabilities. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology from University College London and a PhD in Health Services Research from King’s College London, UK.

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)