The Well-Being in Context Lab brings together interdiciplinary researchers interested in all things well-being related.
Dr. Sophie Potter (Psychology)
Dr. Sophie Potter is the founder and director of the Well-Being in Context Lab. Sophie joined the Department of Psychology at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh) as an Assistant Professor in 2024. She completed an MSc in Individual Differences Psychology from the University of Edinburgh (2017) before going on to complete a PhD in 2021 in lifespan development at Humboldt University of Berlin, funded by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany. She thereafter held a faculty position at The University of Leicester (2022-2024). She is also a member of Heriot-Watt’s Centre for Applied Behavioural Sciences (CABS) and organizes the CABS & Psychology Research Seminar.Dr. Johanna Drewelies (Psychology)
Dr. Johanna Drewelies is a researcher and steering committee member for the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II). Her work focuses on understanding how psychological, social, and physical factors intersect to shape trajectories of aging. Drawing on large-scale longitudinal studies, she investigates topics such as personality development, stress reactivity, and their associations with health outcomes, including cognitive functioning in later life. Her research also examines contextual factors, such as historical trends, exploring how societal changes impact aging populations over time.
Dr. James Brown (Philosophy)
Dr. James Brown is a philosopher, currently working as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheffield. James is currently developing a project on the contextual nature of well-being: ‘Radical Well-Being Holism: A New Framework for the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being’. Here, he challenges the underlying assumption that well-being ultimately consists in the same thing in every context.Dr Emma Bridger (Psychology)
Dr. Emma Bridger is a Lecturer in Psychology based in the School of Psychology and Vision Sciences at the University of Leicester. Emma uses a range of methods to study the impact of socio-ecological contexts on people’s health, well-being and social cognition. Her work includes the use of large-scale data sets to study the influence of social determinants (including socioeconomic conditions and adverse childhood experiences) on subjective well-being as well as how lay persons and clinicians conceptualise and understand the role of “social” causes and contexts for shaping health and well-being.
Dr Mhairi Bowe (Psychology)
Dr. Mhairi Bowe is the Past Chair of the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section, a Chartered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and an active researcher in the field of Social Psychology, Mental Health and Well-being where she specialises in the relationships between social connection and inclusion, loneliness, health, and wellbeing. Mhairi joined the Department of Psychology in the School of Social Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in 2022 where she is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Behavioural Sciences at Heriot-Watt University. Mhairi is the previous lead of Nottingham Trent University’s Groups, Identities, and Health Research Group.
Mhairi’s research is primarily located within social psychology and mental health, where she employs both quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore identity processes in relation to collective, personal, and place-related identities and how they interact with mental health and well-being outcomes. Her research has involved strategic collaborative partnerships with stakeholders from local government, NHS, and a range of community and voluntary sector organisations. Mhairi’s research has been used to guide national and international policy, and she regularly engages in public and specialist knowledge exchange and dissemination. Specific areas of research activity include social prescribing; loneliness reduction; community volunteering; experiences of poverty, human rights violations, and stigma; identity transitions and temporal aspects of identity; mental health and well-being; group processes; social issues and health.
Students
Angelica Hosea (PhD Candidate). Angelica is a PhD student at the University of Leicester, UK, supervised by Dr Sophie Potter and Dr Emma Bridger. She is working on the project ‘Coping and adaptation in old age: Psychological challenges of ageing in individuals and dyads’.