Dr. N. Zoe Hilton, PhD, CPsych
Senior Research Scientist 

Dr. Hilton is the Senior Research Scientist at Waypoint and a Professor of Psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She is also a fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association. Since joining Waypoint over 30 years ago, she has been both a front-line clinician and a full-time researcher. Dr. Hilton conducts research that pertains to justice-involved individuals in the criminal justice and psychiatric systems, and the professionals who provide services for them. She has conducted influential research in the areas of domestic violence, risk assessment, risk communication, and more recently the physical health and psychological wellbeing of both patients and staff at psychiatric hospitals. She was the lead of the research team that created the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA). She is principal investigator on SSHRC-funded research to examine standardized risk assessment and coercive control in domestic violence.

Another major research project follows a cohort of men from admission through four years of care in forensic psychiatry, to explore how their histories and adjustment in the hospital are related to aggressive behaviour and measures of success. She was also the lead of a research and knowledge translation project on Trauma among Psychiatric Workers, a co-investigator on a SSHRC-funded project, led by Sandy Jung, MacEwan University, to examine domestic violence risk in threat assessment and management, and a collaborator in the SSHRC-funded Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative with Vulnerable Populations. Dr. Hilton earned her PhD in Psychology at the University of Toronto and a Master’s degree in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Southampton.

Keywords: criminal justice, domestic violence, risk assessment. 

  Research Interests

Domestic assault; intimate partner violence; forensic risk communication; risk assessment; workplace mental health.

Publications

PubMed Publications

Google Scholar Publications

Kudos Publications and Research Summaries

Student / Volunteer Opportunities

Dr. Hilton welcomes research interns, graduate students, and co-op placement students. She can supervise thesis work for graduate students in research or clinical programs and serve as an external examiner.

Stay Connected

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