Newsletter January 2026 Happy New Year! To all our students, colleagues, collaborators and supporters, Happy New Year. And in a couple of weeks, Happy Lunar New Year! 2025 was another year of continued engagement and activity across our campuses, with programmes growing and accreditations achieved. These were alongside our learning and teaching activities, graduations to celebrate student successes, and welcoming new staff and PhD students to our team. We also saw new research projects getting underway and were able to share the publications and events coming from that work. If you missed any of those highlights, you can access our newsletter archive here. With a new year, we welcome back our current students and share a warm welcome to those joining us this month. Keep in touch with colleagues and classmates, and we’ll do what we can to ensure everyone has a good year! To help keep connected, you’ll see our in-person and online events and activities are underway for the new semester, so do join us for those. All are welcome! We’ll continue to showcase many of our activities and more in our monthly newsletters and we hope you’re interested in those updates. If this month’s issue is anything to go by (a host of news items, recognition for supervision and more!), it’s going to be a good year! So here’s to a happy and healthy 2026. In the news Celebrating this semester’s achievements Celebrating our winter graduates Dubai campus celebrates around 500 graduates at the Winter Graduation Ceremony held at Dubai Opera Celebrating Excellence: Dubai campus student shortlisted for ABP Award BBC Future: Five lifestyle tweaks to help you live well for longer Academics receive national recognition for supervisory practice PhD supervisors recognised by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Help us become an Age-Friendly University Nominations open for Celebrating Our People Awards Latest publications Our latest publications are listed here, but you can find a full list via the Heriot-Watt Research Portal. Fortune, Z., & Zayts-Spence, O. (2026). Thriving Workplaces: Bridging Mental Health Research and Practice (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003244752 Masiero, B. S., Caldas-Correia, F., Underwood, S. H., Rosas-Pérez, C., Algargoosh, A., Bettarello, F., Caniato, M., Davies, W. J., Manley, D., Remington, A., Sivakumar, A., Wilson, W. J., Zaniboni, L., & Wang, L. M. (2025). Ten questions concerning autism and auditory accessibility in buildings. Building and Environment, 286, 113634. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113634 McLeod, G., McKendrick, M., Portelli, R., Husz, Z., James, G., Hewson, D., Chuan, A., McKendrick, T., McKendrick, G., & the Associate Research Group. (2025). Thoracic epidural insertion using extended reality hologram assistance: a randomised trial of regional anaesthesia skill performance on the soft embalmed Thiel cadaver. https://www.bjanaesthesia.org/article/S0007-0912(25)00817-7/abstract Rosas-Pérez, C., Galbrun, L., Payne, S. R., Dickson, A., & Stewart, M. E. (2025). More than noise: Lived experiences of autistic people in real-life acoustic environments. Applied Acoustics, 219, 109413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2025.110581 Serrão, R., Dias, P., Andrés, A., Bowe, M., & Renshaw, T. L. (2026). Adaptation and validation of the Youth internalizing and externalizing problems screener in Portugal: A unified psychological health screening tool. International Journal of School & Educational Psychology, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/21683603.2025.2606337 Tilt, S., Bowe, M., Gardner, S., & Blagden, N. (2026). A mixed methods systematic review of the psychosocial and rehabilitative impact of prison technology with recommendations for practice. Psychology, Crime & Law, 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2025.2598281 Research & engagement Research in action In this section, we share updates from our researchers including their work in progress, studies looking for volunteers, summaries of new papers and more. Details about our research themes and ongoing work can also be found on the Psychology research website. This month, Dr Zoe Fortune from our Dubai team and her co-author, Dr Olga Zayts-Spence, published a monograph with Routledge. The publication is the culmination of research over several years in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Hong Kong and workplaces focused on improving workplace mental health (www.cmhahk.org). The book draws on a collaboration between psychology, sociolinguistics and organisations working to improve workplace mental health in Hong Kong to examine theoretical and practical issues on workplace wellbeing in Asia. It explores the themes of stigma, technology, women and young people and workplace mental health interventions. It uses empirical data gathered by the authors as well as real-world case studies from collaborating companies to provide a practical book bridging the gap between academic findings and practical applications. Find out more (and order your copy) at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003244752/thriving-workplaces-zo%C3%AB-fortune-olga-zayts-spence Conferences and outreach Our Psychology Research Seminars and events run in a variety of modes: in-person, online and hybird. Events in the coming weeks are listed below, with fuller details available on our events page. Check the details to see if you can join the event on your campus or online. This month, members of our Business Psychology community travelled to Cardiff, UK, to attend the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology (BPS DOP) Annual Conference. This year’s theme, Science and Practice: Real Talk on What Works, provided a timely platform for sharing applied, evidence-based research bridging academic insight and professional practice. The conference offered an opportunity to showcase the work from the Heriot-Watt Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Research Lab with colleagues and students from both the Edinburgh and Dubai campuses presenting work. The team was joined by Dubai-based MSc student Nafla AlHamdani, enabling meaningful engagement across career stages and reinforcing the value of student participation in professional psychological forums. Presentations reflected a diverse and practice-oriented research portfolio focused on the evolving world of work. Dr Lucy Bolton, Dr Gary Pheiffer and MSc student Nafla AlHamdani (Dubai) presented research examining gender and identity dynamics in the MENA region, with Dr Joann Griffith (Edinburgh) contributing complementary insights from her ongoing work in this area. The panel, “‘Paradox and Progress: What the Middle East Can Teach the West About Diversity, Identity and Wellbeing”, reflected on the importance of community and belonging, and how distinctions between personal, family and work selves are particularly prominent in many Middle Eastern environments. A key theme was the need to question the automatic exporting of Western models into regions with different cultural priorities and foundations. There was also a strong appetite for more culturally grounded research that respects and reflects local values. Professor Deborah Hall (Edinburgh) shared a systematic reflection on the School of Social Sciences workload project and also presented findings from an Edinburgh-based MSc dissertation exploring leadership in the post-pandemic workplace. Deborah presented a case study which evaluated the workload transformation project, seen through the lens of Kotter’s 8-step model for managing organisational change. The presentation entitled “Strengthening internal capacity to lead on organisational change: A case study in higher education” was co-authored by Sophie Dawes, Professor Christine Rutherford, Professor Cristina Tealdi, Reetu Pradhan, and Deborah, who also presented two posters! Lucy also led a symposium with Joann and Gary, showcasing innovative research on careers, coaching, leadership, and workplace behaviour. Contributions from MSc and PhD student work and research, further enriched the presentations, particularly around how young people navigate transitions into employment. Thanks to our MSc and PhD students for contributing their research projects, Cosma Coelho, Irina Matrosova and Manasa Swaminathan. A key message emerging from this work was that career adaptability should be understood as a shared responsibility between individuals and organisations. Beyond disseminating research from the MENA Research Lab, the conference provided a valuable opportunity to strengthen cross-campus collaboration and reinforce Heriot-Watt’s commitment to science-to-practice scholarship. Participation in the BPS DOP Conference supported the visibility of our research, fostered academic–practitioner dialogue, and enhanced collaborative working across our global campuses . Learning & teaching Although the latest semester is just underway, the team are always looking ahead to new cohorts joining our programmes. In Dubai, Head of Department Dr Minu Mathews showcased what students might expect in new videos for our BSc Psycholgoy with Management and BSc Psychology and Marketing. Watch the videos here https://x.com/HWUDubai/status/2004488317056807192 and https://x.com/HWUDubai/status/2003380991142813947. Student voice In “Student voice”, we hear from our students. Every contribution is different, so if you have something you’d like to share in a future newsletter, get in touch. Did you know our Psychology Society in Dubai produce a regular magazine? Psyched! includes a collection of writings contributed by our students on various issues related to Psychology. For example, the November 2025 issue, available at https://online.fliphtml5.com/psyched25-26/oxlq/, included a special focus on “Little Minds, Big Worlds: Exploring Child Psychology” and the January 2026 issue, https://online.fliphtml5.com/psyched25-26/psyched-january-issue/, considered “Wired Minds: Psychology in the Digital Age”. Check them out today. Team news Congratulations to two of our team on being recognised for their supervisory practice. First up, Dr Mel McKendrick from our Edinburgh team was among 20 School of Social Sciences colleagues recognised by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science for their exemplary PhD supervisory practice, as part of International Mentoring month. Sixty seven nominations were received, with Heriot-Watt supervisors having by far the biggest number of nominations. Thank you to our postgraduate research students for the nominations. Also from our Edinburgh team, Dr Mhairi Bowe received recognition for her supervisory practice from the UK Council for Graduate Education. To achieve Recognised Research Supervisor status, Mhairi produced a reflective account of her supervisory practice, demonstrating clear alignment with the UKCGE Research Supervisory Practice Framework and wider pedagogical literature. Well done Mel and Mhairi! The Department of Psychology is part of the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, with campuses in the UK, Dubai and Malaysia. Our research is is grouped by three main themes: Cognition, Brain and Behaviour; Lifespan Health and Wellbeing; and Work, Society and Environment. Find out more at https://www.hw.ac.uk/about/our-schools/social-sciences/psychology or follow updates on our social media channels.