Dr. Chloe A. Stewart is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology where she works with Dr. Chris Bowie in the . Her research explores psychological disorders, including major depressive disorder and schizophrenia-spectrum disorder, and the development of new interventions to improve the quality of life of people who live with these disorders. Dr. Stewart previously trained in Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Toronto, University College London, and the University of Western Ontario before joining Queen’s in 2021 as a clinical research associate.
Dr. Stewart communicates her research broadly to academic and practitioner communities through engaging conference presentations and publications. She has published her research in a variety of leading journals, and her most recent article was published in the influential The Lancet Neurology (). Chloe’s research is interdisciplinary, evident in her work across a number of areas in psychology and neuroscience, and her research is of interest to healthcare practitioners as well as other scientists who share in the goal to improve outcomes for people living with neurological or psychological disorders.
As part of her research agenda, Dr. Stewart has recently started supervising students on the CONNECT study. The CONNECT study investigates two different aspects of major depressive disorder: self-continuity and emotion recognition. There is some evidence that people who experience depression also have difficulty with social cognition, which is the ability to understand and reflect upon the thoughts and feelings of others. There has also been research that suggests that people experiencing depression feel less self-continuity, a sense of connection to their past selves, than people who have never experienced depression. Dr. Stewart and her colleagues are interested in seeing how people currently experiencing an episode of depression, and people who have experienced depression in the past, perform on tasks that involve recognizing emotions on the face and via voice, and how closely they identify with past versions of themselves.
Dr. Stewart has mentored undergraduate and graduate students in the past and brings her supportive approach to the students of the CONNECT study and larger CPD Lab. Her mentorship is influenced by her interest in professional development as she regularly seeks opportunities to learn new strategies for teaching effectively and designing curriculum to help students succeed. Dr. Stewart has also applied this knowledge to her outreach work with secondary school students by designing and facilitating programs that introduce neuroscience to youth. Dr. Stewart makes positive contributions through her research and her service to the many communities of which she is a member. Queen’s University is fortunate to be one of those communities and looks forward to seeing where Dr. Stewart’s research takes her next.