Dr. Emma Morton completed her PhD and clinical training as a psychologist at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (2018). Following that, she took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where she was supported by a competitive Institute of Mental Health Marshall Fellowship (2019-2021) and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (2021-2023). Dr. Morton currently holds the position of Senior Lecturer (Teaching and Research) in the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University.

Dr. Morton’s research aims to optimize the quality of life of individuals living with mood disorders, with particular emphasis on bipolar spectrum disorders. Three intersecting research streams inform this program: 1) Measuring and predicting patient-valued outcomes in mood disorders, 2) Developing and evaluating psychological interventions for mood disorders, and 3) Improving access to and delivery of psychological interventions. In her postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Morton contributed to the development and evaluation of the PolarUs app, the first quality of life focused self-management education app for bipolar disorder. She is also interested in novel or understudied interventions with the potential to improve quality of life in mood disorders, such as compassion-focused interventions, peer support, and psychedelic-assisted therapies. Dr. Morton’s research has been supported by philanthropic funding (The Laurel Foundation, The Daymark Foundation) and competitive government grants (Health Research BC, The Canadian Institutes of Health Research).

Dr. Morton uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods within a Community-Based Participatory Research framework. She values partnering with individuals with lived experience of mood disorders to design, conduct, interpret and disseminate research. She is passionate about sharing research findings directly with the communities likely to benefit from that knowledge, and is a host and contributor for the webinar series #TalkBD (talkbd.live), among other knowledge translation initiatives. Dr. Morton is a co-director of the Collaborative Research Team to Study Psychosocial Issues in Bipolar Disorder (CREST.BD), a network of academics, clinicians, and people with lived experience of bipolar disorder. CREST.BD seeks to optimise the health and quality of life of people of people with this condition, and empower communities to engage in bipolar disorder research.