Postdoctoral Research Fellow - UOD

Posted on 29 January 2026 | Reference: UOD
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Faculty of Health, University of Dundee. The position is for 18.75 hours per week on a fixed term contract until 31 July 2028. The post holder will act as the researcher for the following study funded by the Chief Scientist Office Scotland:

"Improving outcomes for people with problem substance use and poor mental health:
Co‑designing psychological treatment delivered inside Virtual Reality nature"

The project aims to develop a virtual reality (VR) nature intervention that allows practitioners to deliver psychological treatment to people with problematic substance use (PSU) who can access it at home anonymously via a head‑mounted device. The intervention will be co‑designed with people with lived experience of PSU and poor mental health and delivered by practitioners in drug and alcohol services.

• Run co‑design workshops to adapt a subset of SMART Recovery's mutual aid, peer support psychological treatment so that it can be delivered inside VRn.
• Co‑produce VRn to deliver the adapted psychological treatment and a Manual to go with it.
• Have practitioners and people with PSU test the adapted psychological treatment delivered inside VRn to assess safety, feasibility, accessibility and acceptability and to determine whether it improves mood and reduces anxiety.
• Lead operational research activities including project administration, recruiting and consenting participants, organising workshops and taking field notes, administering questionnaires, conducting think‑aloud and semi‑structured interviews, conducting thematic analysis of qualitative data and presenting descriptive statistics of quantitative data, and writing reports and the intervention Manual.
• Travel within the Scotland central belt as needed.

• Completed or about to complete a PhD in a relevant subject such as behavioural science, psychology, virtual reality healthcare digital technologies, or a related field, and experience in conducting research to doctoral standard.
• Experience in developing and evaluating complex healthcare interventions.
• Comfort with peer research and co‑design methodological approaches and experience working with people with lived experience of problematic substance use and poor mental health.
• Desirable experience working in addiction or mental health settings (not essential).

For a discussion about this position, please contact Dr Gill Hubbard at