Dr Fazeelat Duran PhD, CPsychol, FHEA

Dr Duran is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Fellow member of the Higher Education Academy. She completed her PhD on improving the mental health and well-being of first responders and front-line officers at the University of Birmingham. In 2018, she was appointed as a teaching fellow at the University of Leicester. In 2020, she won a competition-based post-doc fellowship that focused on improving the mental health and well-being of employees exposed to traumatic material as a part of their work, with a specific interest in risk and resilience factors for trauma and intervention strategies for psychological distress. In 2021, she was seconded at Moonshot as a researcher. She has co-produced research with the government and industry both nationally and internationally. Her novel research is used to inform policy and working practices to improve the health and well-being of workers. This work, which had never been done before, enabled her to identify modifiable risk factors and co-produce strategies to improve the well-being of criminal justice staff. The resources she created are now used internationally in law enforcement organizations to train staff in how to protect their well-being and are used in the workplace as a means of starting conversations around mental health. Her work features in the toolkit for investigators’ wellbeing and has been cited in the national policing guidance. Dr Duran has won awards for her research and publications. In 2023, she joined the University of Birmingham as an Assistant Professor in Applied Psychology.

Forensic and Clinical Doctorates

Dr Duran is keen to hear from interested students on opportunities to undertake further research in the areas mentioned below:

1. Trauma and mental health in the criminal justice staff.
2. Risk and resilience factors for trauma.
3. Intervention strategies for psychological distress.
4. Post-traumatic growth in survivors of road traffic accidents.
5. Neurodiversity in law enforcement officers and staff.